METHODISM SUCCESSFUL, 



AND THE 



INTERNAL CAUSES OF ITS SUCCESS. 



BY REV. B. F. TEFFT, D.D., LL.D., 

LATE PRESIDENT OF GENESEE COLLEGE, 
AUTHOR 05" " HUNGARY AND KOSSUTH,'* ' c WEBSTER AND HIS MASTERPIECES," ETC., ETC. 



WITH A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION 

BY BISHOP JANES. 



NEW YORK: 

& JA( 



DERBY & JACKSON, 498 BROADWAY. 



P <4 



Entered according to Act of Coneress, in (he year 1860, by 
DERBY & JACKSON, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 



W. H. Tinson, Stereotypes Geo. Russell & Co., Printers. 



PEEF ACE. 



It will be remembered by many of my readers, that 
Daniel Webster, in his speech of the 1th of March, 1850, 
when discussing matters vital to the continued existence of 
the government, expressed his sorrow for the recent division 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States, into 
its Northern and Southern branches, because he regarded 
the unity of that denomination, not only as " one of the great 
props of religion and morals, throughout the whole country, 
from Maine to Georgia," but as almost essential to the unity 
and integrity of the nation. Similar regrets have been 
uttered by men of the highest position for their intelligence 
and talents, by citizens, statesmen and divines of the greatest 
eminence, in every section of the country. It is but a few 
days ago, indeed, that the present Chief Magistrate of the 
United States, while addressing his countrymen on subjects 
fundamental to the continuance and prosperity of the Repub- 
lic, with the responsibilities and solemnities of his high office 
on him, referring to the causes of dissension and weakness at 
work among the people, mentioned the division of American 
Methodism as a calamity to our national existence : " The 
numerous, powerful, pious and respectable Methodist Episco- 



vi 



PREFACE. 



pal Church has been thus divided ; and the division was a 
severe shock to the Union." 

Such statements, emanating in the one case from the best 
intellect, and in the other from the highest position among 
the people of this country, and in both cases from citizens of 
ripe age and extensive experience and observation, are enough 
to demonstrate the fact, that Methodism has at last become 
a power of no secondary importance on this continent ; and 
yet it is a question among Methodists themselves, who ought 
to know their own affairs, whether their denomination is not 
still higher, stronger, more influential and powerful in Europe 
than in the United States. One thing is certainly clear, that 
Methodism, which began in obscurity and feebleness, has 
achieved for itself everywhere a most wonderful success. 
This point is generally conceded ; but there are few persons, 
nevertheless, on either side of the Atlantic, outside of the 
pale of Methodism, who have taken the pains to learn the 
exact character and extent of this success; and there are 
fewer persons still, I think, either outside or within the 
denomination, who have so examined or studied its origin 
and progress, as to be able to state, with philosophical 
correctness, the organic causes to which its remarkable 
prosperity and growth are to be attributed. 

The following pages were written for the twofold purpose 
of stating the fact, and the philosophy of the fact, of this 
unparalleled development of the Wesleyan Reformation ; 
and the author has aspired to such a style of treatment as to 
call the attention of the thinking portion of the American 
population to this subject. If such men as Webster and the 
President of the republic, when surveying the affairs of the 
nation of greatest magnitude, feel called upon to place 



PREFACE. 



vii 



Methodism at the head of the religious and social influences 
of this continent ; if, on the other hand, Methodism is known 
to be at least equally important in the leading empire of the 
eastern hemisphere ; and if, as is frankly confessed, it took 
its origin as a repudiated and rejected movement, mourned 
over by the good, scorned by the bad, and ridiculed, 
despised, misrepresented and turned out of doors by the 
ruling classes of Europe and America alike, there is a topic 
of study in its success, a problem in its present rank and 
power, which no philosopher, no thinking man, of any nation 
of the world, can longer afford to overlook. 

There is a demand, as I think, and a demand peculiarly im- 
perative at the present crisis of the world's affairs, for a funda- 
mental examination of the causes of the success of Methodism ; 
the history of the movement is very generally known ; but 
thoughtful men cannot rest their curiosity upon the mere facts 
of the case ; they wish to comprehend the force or forces that 
have propelled and developed the Wesleyan revival, till it 
has become what it now is in every quarter of the world ; 
and though they desire the truth, and nothing but the truth, 
they must be ready to acknowledge that the whole truth 
could scarcely be presented by any writer, however able and 
impartial, whose knowledge of the system is only such as is 
possible to those who study it from without. If it is only the 
spirit of a man that can tell what there is in a man, as we are 
told by revelation, it is equally clear, that no one but a 
living person existing within a great social organism can 
declare, correctly and completely, what that organism is, or 
may contain. The work produced by such a person would 
be, I know, egotistic ; it could not be otherwise than egotis- 
tic; but the egotism would be that of an autobiography, 



viii 



PREFACE. 



which, when limited carefully by self-respect and truth, 
constitutes the principal value and leading charm of this 
class of works. 

It was by no cherished prepossession of any personal 
ability to perform such a service, or to meet this general 
demand, that I was prompted to the composition and publi- 
cation of this work. It was by accident alone that I came to 
take up my pen at all upon the subject. In the year 1858, I 
was appointed a delegate of an annual conference of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States to a General 
Conference of Congregationalists in one of the ]N"ew England 
States. The duties of this office required me, if able, to 
attend the said General Conference, and to bear to it the 
fraternal regards and Christian salutations of the body whom 
I was appointed to represent, as well as to give some general 
account of the condition of Methodism, either within the 
limits of my conference, or as a whole, according to the 
amount of time that might be given for the purpose. Cir- 
cumstances beyond my control rendered my attendance at 
the Congregational Conference impossible ; and I was there- 
fore requested, by one of its leading and most respected 
members, to communicate what I had to say in writing. 
" "Write us," said the reverend gentleman, " a good, long 
communication, and let us know exactly what Methodism is 
doing in the world." 

Though I could not but see that this was a very liberal 
commission, and one requiring a great deal of labor, I never- 
theless sat down and wrote quite a lengthy and elaborate 
article on the general topic thus imposed upon me. But it 
was not finished in time for the occasion that had called it 
into being. The next year, I received the appointment as 



PREFACE. 



ix 



delegate to the same body the second time ; but I was again 
unable to leave home ; and so, having before written a little 
treatise, I now conceived the idea, from the very inadequacy 
of so brief a composition to do justice to so large a plan, and 
from the deep interest that had grown up within me in the 
enterprise so undesignedly undertaken, of taking up the 
general subject and treating it at a length in some degree 
commensurate with its magnitude and importance. 

Such is the accidental origin and history of this work ; and 
the reader of these pages is therefore to listen to what 
he reads, not as to something drawn up by a professional 
book-maker, who had no object in view beyond the making 
of a book, but as to the words of one called upon to utter, in 
the presence of a sister denomination, and before a promis- 
cuous assemblage of intelligent citizens, what he could say 
from his own knowledge and experience of what the world 
calls Methodism. That assembly may be expanded, if the 
reader pleases, into an audience as wide as the nation, and 
as numerous as the reading population of the country, and 
yet these pages are but the language of a person, who, with 
the usual license of such an office, is simply relating what he 
has learned by personal experience and observation of a 
religious movement, whose success contains a problem of 
which every intelligent citizen must desire to obtain a phi- 
losophical solution. 

The reader will see, at the first glance, that I have dealt 
largely in the names of the living and the dead, who, either 
as preachers, teachers, or writers, have made themselves a 
reputation in the annals of the denomination. It may be 
imagined, indeed, that I have labored to make some display 
of the illustrious ornaments of Methodism. This, however, 

1* 



X 



PREFACE. 



is not the truth ; and, in looking over what is here to be 
given to the public, I regret that my limits have compelled 
me to omit many names, English and American, as worthy 
of a record as any I have included. American Methodism, 
in particular, is rich with characters, whose names have not 
been so much as alluded to in this production. When it is 
considered that, among the pulpit orators of Methodism, no 
mention has been made of such men as Cummings, and Ray- 
mond, and Livesey, and Barrows, and Webber, and Curtis, 
and Cox, and Taylor, and Miley, and Corbitt, and Castle, 
and Bristol, and Goodwin, and Bingham, and Trimble, and 
Robinson, and Hargrave, and Haney, and Eddy, and 
Hamline, and Sewell, and Morgan, and Slicer, and Hamilton, 
and Keener, who have few or no competitors in the sections 
to which they have devoted their labors, it must be appa- 
rent that no effort has been made at ostentation. Then, of 
the authors of the denomination, there is a score of such 
names as those of Liscomb, and Thomas, and Luckey, and 
Gorrie, and Spicer, and Lorraine, and Brooks, and Loomis, 
and Harris, and Williams, and Thayer, and Warren, and 
Kent, and Mudge whose productions could not be omitted 
from a full list of the more able and successful writers ; the 
writings of Liscomb and of Harris, in particular, are to be 
ranked among the most marked and able of the denomina- 
tion ; and in this way, the catalogue would extend to a length 
beyond the limits of a chapter, had it not been the idea of 
this work to give classes and specimens of the distinguished 
men of Methodism, rather than a complete account. But I 
cannot omit the names of those men, who, like Thomas Carl- 
ton, Leroy Swormstedt, Adam Poe, William M. Doughty 
and James P. Magee, have done marvels of good in manag- 



PREFACE. 



xi 



ing the publishing interests of the denomination, and in the 
diffusion of its literature over the breadth of the continent. 
The present generation owes them a debt which several gen- 
erations to come will not be entirely able to discharge. 

It may be thought, on the other hand, that the positions 
and productions of so many living men could scarcely be 
represented by a cotemporary without some show of the 
personal likes and dislikes so common to mankind. This, 
certainly, is a very natural presumption ; but I think those 
taking up the volume with this apprehension will meet with 
an agreeable disappointment. The work has been written to 
punish no enemies, to laud no friends, but to speak for a 
noble cause, and to utter the simple truth. No man's repu- 
tation has been taken upon rumor ; for rumor is apt to be, as 
I know and feel, cruel and unjust ; nor have I, in any 
instance, judged of a person's production by my opinions of 
the man. I have everywhere separated the man from his 
works, and then both from all relations to myself, that I 
might render a verdict which the severest historic candor 
must ever afterward approve. I shall consider myself well 
treated if my readers will follow the same rule in judging of 
what I have herein performed. 

Though the very groundwork of this volume required me 
to speak of other denominations, and to compare them in 
some respects with my own, I cherish nothing but the most 
kindly feeling for their welfare and the sincerest interest in 
their success. I feel, indeed, that I have arrived at that 
period of life, when a person of any magnanimity or fore- 
sight can see little or no cause for maintaining other than the 
most cordial relations, with societies of men, or with any 
member of the great family of man. Not a line has been 



xii 



PREFACE. 



prompted, therefore, "by a sentiment of ill-will. The final 
triumph of our common Christianity is the object lying near- 
est of all things to the center of my heart. To God and 
humanity have I renewedly consecrated what remains to me 
of mortal life ; and though I am conscious, in no word I have 
written, in no transaction of any kind, of having the smallest 
intention to wrong or injure a human being, my future, I am 
resolved, shall proceed more exclusively than ever from that 
principle which I have made the center and substance of the 
system set forth in this production — the principle of eternal 
benevolence, the religion of universal love. 

With these sentiments, and with a heart throbbing to 
make the days yet before me tell as much as possible for the 
spread of this heart-felt religion, and the progress of the 
race, I send this production on its errand of good, hoping 
that it may be yet doing something for mankind after its 
author has gone to his repose among the silent dead. 



ENTKODUCTOEY LETTEK. 



BY BISHOP JANES. 

New Yoek, June 20, 1S60. 

Rey. B. f . Tefft, D.D., LL. D. 

Deae Sie : I have just seen and read a prospectns of your 
forthcoming work, entitled, " Methodism Seccessfee, and the Ix- 
teenae Caeses of its Seccess." 

Judging from its outline, plan, and table of contents, it cannot fail 
to be a useful and interesting work. 

The success of any Christian agency, even though feeble and lim- 
ited, is inconceivably important. " There is joy in the presence of 
the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." "He which con- 
verteth a sinner from the error of his ways shall save a soul from 
death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." The salvation of one soul 
is a more glorious success than gaining the whole world. The re- 
storation of one fallen, but redeemed, rational, and immortal spirit, 
to goodness and to God, is of eternal importance. Any instrumen- 
tality that effects this result is of incalculable value and inexpressible 
interest. 

If, as we believe, Methodistic Christianity has multiplied such re- 
sults by hundreds of thousands, yea, millions, how vast the scale of 
its influence, and how immense the beatitude it has conferred. 

A clear representation of its wonderful success would enable the 
Christian public to appreciate more properly its religious usefulness, 
and to sustain more earnestly its future operations. It must also be 
felt by all catholic and devout Christians to be cause of thanksgiving 
and praise, that God has been pleased to raise up and prosper this 
branch of his general church, which is doing so considerable a part 
in the evangelization of the world. 

Your second topic — "The Internal Causes of its Success " — is per- 
haps of even greater practical importance. As a church, in all our 
religious prosperity, we have uniformly said, " The excellency of the 

xiii 



xiv 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 



power is of God, and not of man." Yet we know that God employs 
agencies in carrying out the purposes of his love to our race. It is, 
therefore, exceedingly desirable to know what agencies have His 
more especial sanction, and are thereby rendered eminently success- 
ful. As Methodistic Christianity has been eminently, if not pre- 
eminently successful, (in modern times,) in its workings, and as its 
achievements are among the most signal and blessed the Church has 
witnessed during the past hundred years, if we can ascertain the 
causes of this efficiency and prosperity, we shall confer upon all the 
propagandists of Christianity a great favor, by showing them the 
means and measures by which they may expect success in this work 
of God. From the plan of your work submitted to me, and from my 
knowledge of your ability to investigate the subject philosophically 
and spiritually, and to present the results of your examination intel- 
ligently and attractively, I believe your book will be one of much 
interest and usefulness. This must be true, if, as I anticipate, it 
leads all Christians to renounce dependence on imposing forms and 
ceremonies, and on magnificent temples and human displays, and 
whilst intently plying their simple, well-directed instrumentalities, 
to feel and say, " Not by might, nor by power, but my Spirit, saith 
the Lord;" and both in life and death declare with Mr. "Wesley, 
" The best of it is, God is with us." 

Yours, fraternally in Christ, 

E. S. JA5JE8. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



PAGE 

The First Methodist, . . 26-44 

The Fire at Ep worth, . . 26 

Rescue of John Wesley, . . 28 

Scrap from the Latin Testament, . 29 

Character of Little John, . . 29 

A Pupil to his Mother, . . 30 

A Student of the Charter House, . 30 

A Student at Oxford, . . 81 

Correspondence with his Mother, . 32 

His Mother's Influence, . . 32 

His Little Club at Oxford. . . 33 

First Members of his Club, . . 84 

He becomes a Fellow of Oxford, . 34 

Influence of his Mother, . . 34 

Call to go to Georgia, . . 35 

Crosses the Ocean, ... 36 

Conversations with Moravians, . 36 

Returns to England, . . 36 

Goes to Germany, ... 37 



PAGE 



Conversations with Zinzendorf, . 37 

Settlement of his Course of Life, . 87 

His great Humility, . . 37 

Character of his Preaching, . 38 

His Future shaped by Providence, 38 

Examination of his Conversion, . 38 

His Conversation Fundamental, . 38 

A Key to his Character and Life, . 39 

Influence of the Fire at Epworth, . 40 

How he became what he was, . 40 

He the Founder of Methodism, . 41 

Mrs. Wesley and Methodism, . 41 

Charles Wesley and Methodism, . 41 

Whitefield and Methodism, . 42 

Wesley Rejected by the Church, . 42 

Turned Out of all the Pulpits, . 43 

Disheartening Prospect, . . 44 
One ray of Hope from the Promises 

of Scripture, ... 44 



CHAPTER II. 



Numerical Strength of Methodism 
The Rejection of Jesus the means 

of Spreading His Religion, 
Rejection of Luther favorable to the 

Spread of the Reformation, 
Rejection of Wesley Advances the 

Growth of Methodism, . 
The Argument of Success, . 
Pompey and Caesar, 
Francis Bacon and Mrs. Stowe, 
Mohammedanism and Methodism 
Era of Methodism, . 

I. English Methodism, 

1. British Wesleyan Conference, 

2. Eastern Brit. Am. Conference, 

3. Canad. Wesleyan Conference, 

4. Australian Conference, . 

5. French Conference, 

6. Cluster of Smaller Bodies, 

II. American Methodism , . 

1. Methodist Episcopal Church, 

2. Methodist Episcopal Church 
South, ... 

3. Wesleyan Method, of U. S., 

4. Canada Methodist Episcopal 
Church, 

5. Protestant Methodist Church of 
United States, 



45-75 

45 

45 

45 
47 
47 
47 
48 
48 
49-50 



50 
50 
50 
50 
50-51 
50 



III. Missionary Methodism, 

1. Home Dep'tment of Brit. Meth, 

2. Foreign Department of British 
Meth., 

3. Missionary Department of Me 
thodist Episcopal Church, 

4. Missions of Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South. 

5. Missions of Smaller Societies, 
General Aggregate of Methodism 
A Grand Array of Numbers, 
Methodism and the Primitive 

Church, 

Methodism and the Church of Eng- 
land, 

Methodism in the United States, 
Methodism and the Protestant 

Episcopal Church, 
Methodism and Congregationalism 
Decline of Congregationalism, 
Slow Growth of Episcopalianism, 
Success not an Argument, . 
Small Beginning of Methodism, 
Remark of Dr. Channing, . 
Methodism hard at Work, . 
Literary Character of Methodism 
What Methodism proposes to Do, 
Methodism and Education, 



xvi 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Schools of British Methodism, . 67 
Schools of American Methodism, . 68 
Character of Methodist Schools, . 69 
Courses of Study in them, . . 70 
Ministerial Education, . . 70 
Methodist Biblical Schools, . 71 
Education of Early Methodists, . 71 
Law Schools of Methodism, . 72 
Medical Schools of Methodism, . 72 
Publishing Houses of English Me- 
thodism, .... 73 



PAGE 

System of Cheap Publications, Me- 
thodistic, .... 73 

Publishing Houses of American 

Methodism, . . .. 74 

Periodicals of American Metho- 
dism, .... 74 

Literature of American Methodism, 75 

Concessions of other Denomina- 
tions, .... 75 

So much in so Youthful a Denomi- 
nation, .... 75 



CHAPTER III. 



Rank and Power of English Me- 
thodism, .... 76-147 
Recovery of Rank in England, . 76 
How Persecuted at First, . . 76 
Progress, . ... 76 
Notoriety given it by Opposition, . 77 
Wesley confessed to be a Remark- 
able Man, .... 77 
Methodism still Progressing, . 77 
Most Learned Man of England a 

Methodist, ... 77 

Religious Rank and Power, . 78 

English Methodism very Literary, 79 
Samuel Wesley and the Athenian 

Mercury, .... 79 
Samuel Wesley and Pope, Richard- 
son, Tate, and Swift, . . 79 
Works of Samuel W r esley, . . 79 
Samuel Wesley and his Poetry, . 80 
Susannah Wesley, ... 80 
Her Intellectual Character, . 80 
Her great Attainments, . . 80 
Her Writings and Influence, . 81 
Samuel Wesley, Junior, . . 81 
His Brothers and Sisters, . . 82 
His great Abilities, ... 82 
His genius as a Poet, . . 82 
His Associations with the Learned, 83 
Emilia Wesley, ... 83 
Her Mother's Care of Her, . 83 
Her remarkable Memory, . . 84 
Her general Character, . . 84 
An Artistic Reader of Milton, . 84 
Her Portrait by her Sister, . 85 
Susannah Wesley, Junior, . . 86 
Her Unhappy Marriage, . . 86 
Her Mental Character, . - . 87 
Hilarity of her Disposition, . 87 
General Estimate of Her, . . 87 
Mary Wesley, ... 88 
Her great Beauty, ... 88 
She Died in early Womanhood, . 88 
What her Sister says of Her, . 89 
Mehetable Wesley, . . . 89 
Her great Precocity, . . 89 
Her Beauty of Person, . . 90 
Wit, Humor, Mirthfulness, . . 90 
Poetical Portrait of Her, . . 90 
Her Poetic Genius, ... 91 
Her Poetical Works, . . 92 
Quotation from her Poetry, . 98 
Anne Wesley, ... 94 
Her brother Samuel's Epithala- 
mium, .... 94 



Her Marriage, ... 94 

Her manner of Life, . . 94 

Not spurred to Labor by Necessity, 95 
Compared, in this Respect, with 

Kindred Spirits, ... 95 
Compared with Shakspeare, Milton, 
Addison, Smollett, Goldsmith, 
Cowley,Collins, Johnson, Dryden, 

Lightfoot, and Chatterton, . 95 
Her Service to the Literature of 

Methodism, ... 97 
Martha Wesley, ... 97 
Dr. Clarke's Opinion of Her, . 98 
She was the Associate of Dr. John- 
son, .... 98 
Her Conversations with Johnson, . 99 
The friend of Garrick, Burke, etc., 100 
The greatness of her Genius, . 101 
Kezziah Wesley, . . . 101 
Her Talents very marked, . . 101 
She Dies Young, . . .102 
Sarah Wesley, . . .102 
Charles Wesley, Junior, . . 102 
Charles a Musical Prodigy, . 103 
Surpassed by his brother Samuel, . 103 
Samuel a Poet at eight years of 

age, . . . .108 

A Specimen of his Powers, . 104 
Samuel compared with Pope and 

Milton as a Boy-Poet, . . 105 
General Review of these less noted 

members of the Wesley Family, 105 

Charles Wesley, the Poet, . . 106 

His Style as a Prose Writer, . 106 

His rank as a Lyric Poet, . . 106 

Compared with Dr. Watts, . . 106 

Portraiture of Watts as a Poet, . 107 
Watts, Stennett, Steele, Addison, 
and Opie, as a School of Lyric 
Poets, . . . .108 

Cowper as a Lyric Poet, . . 109 

Milton's Lyrical Genius, . . 110 

Defence of Milton, Cowper, etc., . Ill 

It will not apply to Watts, . . Ill 

Charles W T esley's Lyrics, . . Ill 

Free from the Faults of Watts, . 112 
Watts' Appreciation of Charles 

Wesley, . . . .112 

John Wesley's estimate of Charles, 113 

Comparison of Watts and Wesley, 114 

Watts' Masterpiece, . . 114 

Criticism on it, . . 114 

Watts describes too much, . . 114 

Wesley does not describe, . . 115 



CONTENTS. 



xvii 



PAGE 



Comparative Specimen from Wes- 
ley, . . . .116 
Watts and Wesley contrasted as to 

several other points, . . 117 
Distmguishing peculiarity of Wes- 

lay, . . . .118 

Wesley, like Shakspeare, enacts 

his parts, not describes them, . 118 
Wesley presented under a great 
variety of aspects as a Lyric 
Poet, . . . .120 
Wesley compared with David, . 121 
Wesley's position as the Poet of 

Methodism, . . .122 
Final Comparison of AVatts and 

Wesley, . . . .124 
John Wesley, . . .125 
John Wesley as a Poet, . . 125 
His Corrections of Dr. Watts, . 125 
John Wesley as a Translator. . 125 
Dr. Milner's Concession, . . 126 
Specimens of Wesley's Improve- 
ments upon Watts, . . 126 
John Wesley as a Scholar, . . 128 
His Services to English Literature, 128 
He introduces it to the Fountains 

in the German Language, . 129 
Anticipates Carlyle, etc., in this, . 129 
John Wesley as an Author, . 130 

Extent of his Labors, . . 131 

Popularity of his Productions, . 131 
More Read than any English 

Author, . . . .132 
More Read than any of the Classics, 133 
John Fletcher, . . .133 
His Character, by Dr. Southey, . 134 
His Talents as a Writer, . . 134 
What he did for Methodism, . 135 
Isaac Taylor's Opinion of Him, . 135 
Thomas Coke, LL.D., . . 136 
An Apostolic Man, . . . 136 
His eminence as a Literary Man, . 136 
His Writings, . . .136 

His Labors in behalf of Metho- 
dism, .... 136 
The first Lay Preachers, . . 13T 
Dr. Southey's Opinion of them, . 137 
Then strong Sense and Education, 137 
The great Learning of some of 

them, . . . .137 
Scholarship of Thomas Walsh, . 137 



PAGE 



Wesley's estimate of his Abilities, 137 
Dr. Adam Clarke, . . .139 

His wonderful Learning, . . 139 

His numerous Literary Works, . 139 

And yet always an Itinerant, . 139 
Richard Watson, . . .139 

His breadth of Intellect, . . 139 

His Theological Productions, . 139 

Joseph Benson, . . . 140 

His Abilities as a Preacher, . 140 

His Commentary and other Works, 140 
More recent Magnates of English 

Methodism, . . . 140 

Rev. William Arthur, D.D., . 140 

Rev. John Beecham, D.D., . . 140 

Rev. Jabez Bunting, D.D., . . 141 

Rev. G-eorge Cubitt, . . 141 

Rev. James Dixon, D.D., . . 141 

Rev. Dr. Etheridge and his Works, 141 
Rev. Thomas Jackson, D.D., and 

his Works, . . .141 

Rev. F. A. West, D.D., and his 

Writings, . . . .142 

Rev. F. J. Jobson, D.D., and his 

Works, . . . .142 

Rev. G. Turner and his Works, . 142 

Rev. A. Scott and his Works, . 142 

Rev. Robert Young and his Works, 142 

Rev. J. H. Rigg and his Works, . 142 
A large class of English Methodist 

Authors, . . . .142 

Rev. W. H. Rule, D.D., and his 

Works, . . . .143 

Rev. G. Smith and his Works, . 143 

Orators of English Methodism, . 144 

George Whitefield as an Orator, . 145 

Dr. Franklin's Opinion of him, . 145 

John Wesley as a Preacher, . 145 

Thomas Walsh as a Preacher, . 145 

Joseph Benson as a Preacher, . 145 

Richard Watson in the Pulpit, . 145 

Dr. Bunting and his Eloquence, . 145 

Dr. Newton and his Eloquence, . 145 

Dr. Dixon and his Eloquence, . 146 

Dr. Arthur as an Orator, . . 146 
Rev. W. M. Punshon the Prince of 

living English Pulpit Orators, . 146 

Compared with Spurgeon, . . 146 

Punshon and P. T. Barnum, . 147 
General Review of the Rank and 

Power of English Methodism, . 147 



CHAPTER IV. 



Rank and Power of American Me- 
thodism, . . - 148-200 

First planting of Methodism in 
America, .... 148 

The work begun by Wesley and 
Whitefield, . . .148 

Influence of the Revolutionary 

War, , . . .148 

Labors and Success of Coke and 

Asbury, .... 148 

Wonderful Growth of Methodism, . 149 

Character of its Early Preachers, . 150 

What Judge M'Lean says of 
them, .... 150 



He puts Bishop M'Kendree at the 



head of American Pulpit Orators, 151 
Rev. Jesse Lee, . . . 152 
Rev. Freeborn Garretson, . . 152 
Rev. Nathan Bangs, D.D., . . 152 
Influence of Methodism upon Elo- 
quence, .... 152 
Produced a new School of Oratory, 152 
Rev. John Summerfield, M.A., . 153 
Rev. John N. Maffitt, . . 153 
Rev. Willbur Fisk, D.D., . . 153 
Rev. George Cookman, . . 153 
Rev. H. B. Bascom, D.D., LL.D., . 153 
These compared with H. W. Beecher 153 



• xviii 



CONTENTS. 



Popularity of Bascom, . . 154 | 

Popularity of Maffitt, . 154 | 
Living Pulpit Orators of American 

Meiliodism, . . . 155 

A Methodist Platform of Orators, . 156 

Rev. Thomas H. Stockton, D.D., . 150 

Rev. John M'Clintock, D.D. LLD., 156 

Rev. Edward Thomson, D.D. LL.D., 156 
Rev. Geo. P. Pierce, D.D., . .156 

Rev. W. A. Smith, D.D., . . 156 

Rev. Joseph Cross, D.D., . . 156 

Rev. Edward Sehon, D.D., . . 156 

Rev. Abel Stevens, LL.D.,' . . 156 

Rev. W. H. Milburn, A.M., . 156 

Rev. Jesse T. Peck, D.D., . . 156 

Rev. R. S. Foster, D.D., . . 156 

Rev. J. P. Durbin, D.D. . . 156 
Oratory of the Bench of Bishops 

of the M. E. Church, . . 156 
Oratory of the Bench of Bishops 

of the M. E. Church, South, . 159 

Literature of American Methodism, 161 
Its first Efforts, . . .161 

Coke and Asbury as Authors, . 162 

Rev. Jesse Lee as an Author, . 162 

Rev. Valentine Cook as a Scholar, 162 
Rev. Mr. Beauchamp as a Thinker 

and Writer, . . .162 

A Literary Prodigy, . . 162 

Another Literary Prodigy, . . 164 
Rev. Charles Elliott, D.D. LL.D. as 

a Scholar and Author, . . 165 
His leading Works, . . .166 
Rev. Stephen Olin, D.D. LL.D., as 
the leading Metaphysician of 

American Methodism, . . 16T 

His great Abilities and Learning, . 167 

His great Literary Projects, . 168 

Those classed with him, . . 169 
Rev. T. Merritt, . . .169 

Rev. J. P. Durbin, D.D , . . 169 

Rev. Israel Chamberlayne, D.D., . 169 

Rev. John Dempster, D.D., . 169 

Rev. H. M. Johnson, D.D., . 169 

Rev. C. K. True, D.D., . . 169 

Rev. Ignatius A. Few, LL.D., . 169 

Rev. Augustus B. Lonestreet, LL.D. 169 
Rev. John M'Clintock, D.D. LL D., 
and his School of Classical 
Scholars, . . . .170 

Rev. G-. R. Crooks, D.D., . . 170 

Rev. S. M. Vail, D.D., . . 170 

Rev. Isaiah McMahon, A.M., . 170 
Rev. N. C. Brooks, A.M , . .171 

Great number of Classical Scholars, 171 
Augustus W. Smith, LL.D., and his 
School of Mathematical and 

Scientific Writers, . . 172 

John Johnston, LL.D., . . 172 

Rev. Geo. C. Whitlock, LL.D., . 172 

Rev. H. Mattison, A.M., . . 173 
Professor S. L. Loomis, A.M. and 

M.D., . . . .173 
Rev. D. W. Clark, D.D., as a Mathe- 
matician, .... 173 
Rev. J. P. Durbin, D.D., as an Edi- 
tor of Scientific Works, . . 173 
Remarkable familiarity of Metho- 
dist Ministers with the Bible, . 178 



PAGK 

Rev. Isaac Puffer a Prodigy, . 174 
Rev. F. G. Hibbard, D.D., and 

Works, . . .175 
James Strong, S.T.D., and Works, 175 
Rev. A. M. Osbon, D.D., as a 

Writer, . . . . • 175 
Rev. Geo. Coles and his Concord- 
ance, .... 175 
Rev. Peter Akers, D.D., and his 

Chronology, . . . 175 
Theological Writers of Methodism, 176 
Rev. Adam Clarke, LL.D., etc., . 176 
Rev. Joseph Benson, . . 176 
Rev. Richard Watson, . . 176 
Rev. Dr. Ralston, . . .177 
Rev. Asbury Lowrey, A.M., . 177 
Rev. Nathan Bangs, D.D., . . 177 
Rev. T. Merritt, . . .177 
Rev. Willbur Fisk, D.D., . . 177 
Rev. R. S. Foster, D.D., . . 177 
Rev. Geo. Peck, D.D., . . 177 
Rev. J. T. Peck, D.D., . . 177 
Mrs. Phebe Palmer, . . 177 

Rev. Thos. A. Morris, D.D., . 177 
Rev. H. B. Bascom, D.D. LL.D., . 177 
Rev. Stephen Olin, D.D. LL.D., . 177 
Rev. William Nast, D.D., . . 177 
Historians and Biographers, . 178 
Rev. D. W. Clark, D.D., . . 179 
Rev. W. P. Strickland, D.D., . 179 
Rev. J. F. Wright, D.D., . . 179 
Hon. John M'Lean, LL.D., . 179 

Rev. James Porter, D.D., . . 179 
Rev. Dr. M'Clintock, . . 179 
Rev. Dr. Olin, . . .179 
Rev. Nathan Bangs, D.D., . . 179 
His History of Methodism, . 179 

Rev. Abel Stevens, LL.D , . .179 
His History of Methodism, . . 179 
Rev. Calvin Ruter, D.D., . . 179 
Rev. G F. Cox, A.M., . . 179 
Rev. Bishop Emory, . .179 

Rev. Robert Emory, D.D., . . 180 

Rev. L. M. Lee, D.D., . . 180 
Rev. W. H. Milburn, . . ISO 
Rev. Daniel Curry, D.D., . . 181 
Rev. J. Holdich, D.D., . . 181 
Rev. C. F. Deems, D.D., . . 181 
Rev. J. B. Finley, D.D., . . 181 
Rev. C. Adams, D.D., . . 181 
S. S. Literature of American Me- 
thodism, .... 181 
Rev. D. P. Bidder, D.D., and his 

Services, . . . .182 
Rev. Daniel Wise, D.D., and his 

Services, ... .182 
Rev. William Hosmer, . . 182 
Rev. Geo. Peck, D.D., . .182 
Rev. J. T. Peck, D.D. . . 182 
Rev. E. 0. Haven, D.D., . . 182 
Dr. Wise the Peter Parley of Me- 
thodism, . .182 
The Belles-Lettres Writers of Ame- 
rican Methodism, . . 183 
Methodism not unfavorable to fine 

writing, . . . . .183 
Remarks upon Whittier and Milton, 183 
Rev. Stephen Olin, D.D., LL.D., . 184 
Rev. Joseph Cross, D.D., . . 184 



CONTENTS. 



xix* 



PAGK 



Rev. D. D. Whedon, D.D., . . 184 

Rev. W H. Allen, LL IX, . . 184 

Rev. Abel Stevens, LL.D., . . 184 

Rev. E. Wentworth, D.D., . . 184 

Hon. W. C. Larrabee, LL.D., . 184 

Rev. E. Thomson, D.D. LL.D., . 185 

William C. Brown, Esq., . . 185 

Mary Maxwell as a Poetess, . 186 
Rev. J. D. Bell, A.M., as a fine 

Writer, . . . .186 

Mrs. H. C. Gardiner, . . 186 

Rev. Mark Trafton, A.M., . . 186 

Rev. James Floy, D.D., . . 187 

Rev. L. L. Hamline, D.D., . 187 
Miscellaneous Writers of American 

Methodism, . . 1S8 

Rev. James Floy, D.D., . . 188 

Rev. Daniel Curry, D.D., . . 188 

Rev. Calvin Kingsley, D.D., . 188 

Rev Charles Collins, D.D., . . 188 

Rev. William Hunter, D.D., . 188 

Rev. J. V. Watson, D.D., . . 188 

Rev. M. P. Gaddis, A.M., . . 188 

Rev. Joseph M'D. Mathews, D.D., 188 

G. P. Dissossway, A.M., . . 188 

Mrs. C. M. Edwards, ." . 188 

Rev. L. D. Davis, . . .188 

Rev. S. R. Coggeshall, D.D., . 188 

Rev. R. W. Allen, A.M., . . 188 

Rev. J. S. Inskip, . . .188 

Rev. John Miley, D.D., . . 188 

Rev. Robert Allyn, A.M., . . 189 

Rev. 0. C. Baker, D.D., . . 189 

Rev. E. S. Janes, D.D., . . 189 

Rev. M. Simpson, D.D., . „ 189 



TAGE 



Rev. T. F. R. Mercein, A.M., . 189 
Rev. T. E. Bond, M.D. and D.D., . 189 
Professor M. Caldwell, A.M., . 189 
Rev. J. T. Crane, D.D., . . 189 
Rev. John H. Power, D.D., . 189 

Rev. F. Hodgson, D.D., . . 189 
Rev. D. Smith, . . .189 
Rev. W. Taylor, . . .190 
Rev. C. W. Thomas, A.M., . 190 

New York "Evangelist's" enco- 
mium on the Literature of Me- 
thodism, . . . .190 
Dr. Dewey's compliment to Mercein 191 
Examples chiefly from Northern 

Methodism, . . .192 

Zeal of Methodism increasing, . 193 
High Social Position, . . 194 
Three Presidents of the United 

States its friends, . . . 195 

Conversion of President Harrison, 195 
Scene in Wesley Chapel, Cincinnati, 196 
Hon. Judge M'Lean as a Methodist, 196 
Representation of Methodism in 

Congress, .... 197 
Representation of it in State Gov- 
ernments, .... 197 
Representation of it in Foreign 

Governments, . . . 197 

Distribution of American Metho- 
dism, . . . .198 
Strength from its peculiar distribu- 
tion, . . • . 199 
General summing up, . . 200 
Methodism so Powerful though yet 
so Young . . . .200 



CHAPTER V. 



Outside Solutions of the Charac- 
ter and Success of Methodism, 201-292 
Methodism a Power in the World, 201 
A loftier Stand-point taken, . 202 
Methodism and Catholicism, . 202 
A yet broader View of Methodism, 203 
The chief Religious Power in the 

controlling Nations of the Globe, 204 
England and the United States the 
leading Powers of the World's 
future, . . . .204 
Methodism to be the leading Reli- 
gious Power in both these lead- 
ing Countries, . . . 205 
The mystery of Methodism, . 207 
The Problem to be solved, . . 208 
Philosophical method of Inquiry to 
be adopted, . . .209 
I. Unfriendly Outside Opinions 
and Estimates of Methodism: 
Gossiping Letters of Mrs. Hutton, 210 
Their influence upon Tuinuel Wes- 
ley, . . . • . 212 
Samuel's Letters to John Wesley, . 212 
Prejudices of the Wesley Family, 213 
Dr. Priestley's use of this Family 

Correspondence, . . . 215 
Dr. Priestley's Views unfriendly, . 215 
His influence upon Philosophers, . 215 



Opposition of Rev. Mr. Toplady, . 216 



His devotional spirit, . . 217 
His practical Views quite Metho- 

distic, .... 218 
Soured against Wesley by his Cal- 
vinism, .... 218 



His Accusations of Methodism, . 218 

Considers it the work of the Devil, 218 

Great bitterness of Diction, . 219 

His Controversy with Walter Sellon, 220 

Exceedingly sarcastic and bitter, . 220 

How he justifies his Severity, . 221 

He Reviles Wesley, . . 222 
Calls him a Wolf and Confederate 

of the Devil, . . .223 
This the Style of all his Writings 

against Wesley and Methodism, 223 

Apology for this Treatment, . 224 

He considered Methodism an Evil, 225 

His fine Spirit in Retirement, . 226 
Toplady set the opinion of Calvin- 

ists in'regard to Methodism, . 226 

Estimate of Methodism till 1807-1S10 226 

Toplady's Dying Testimony, . 226 

His first Biographer more mild, . 227 
His second rebukes him for his 

Severity, . . . .227 

Dr. Pringle speaks quite candidly 

of Wesley, . . . 22S 



XX 



CONTENTS. 



The numerous Slanders against 

Wesley, . . . .228 
First Letter of Sir Richard Hill, . 229 
Wesley takes no notice of it, . 229 
Hill's Second Letter, . . 230 
Wesley is still and ever after silent, 235 
Many are staggered by his Silence, 236 
Probable Reasons why Wesley did 
not condescend to answer Sir 
Richard, . . . .235 
Opinion of Wesley growing more 

favorable, . . . .236 
Reputation of Methodism at the 

Epoch 1807-1810, . . 236 

First attack of Sidney Smith in the 

Edinburgh Review, . . 237 
Severe charges against Methodism, 237 
Smith denounces it as Fanaticism, 23S 
He admits its Wonderful Success, . 239 
He gives six characteristics of it, . 240 
He states the causes of its growth, 245 
Coarse Vituperation, . . 246 
Voice of the Press generally, . 247 
Bigotry and Methodism, . . 248 
Dr. Cook's estimate of Metho- 
dism, . . . .249 
His Objections to the machinery of 

Methodism, . . .251 
False views of its Origin and His- 
tory, • 251 
Substitutes Antinomianism for Me- 
thodism, .... 251 
Cook's causes of the increase of 

Methodism, . . . 252 
He thinks it a nuisance to be 

abated, . . . .253 
General Review of the Opponents 
of Methodism, . . . 254 
//. Favorable, Judgments of Me- 
thodism, .... 255 
The outside Opponents of Me- 
thodism balanced by outside 
Friends, equally eminent and in- 
fluential, .... 155 
A Reaction in its favor, . . £56 
Origin of this Reaction, . . 257 
Dr. Southey and Methodism, . 258 
Southey not the man to judge can- 
didly of Methodism, . . 259 
His general Opinion of it quite 

favorable, . . . .260 
His charge of ambition corrected 
first by Alexander Knox, and 
afterward by himself, . . 262 
Knox and his Testimony in hehalf 

of Wesley and Methodism, . 262 
His high eulogy of Wesley, . 263 
Wesley's last days as beheld by 

Knox, . . . .266 



PAGE 

Knox Answers the charge of Fa- 
naticism, .... 266 
His Opinion of the Character of 
Methodism, . . . 267 

He Sanctions the Doctrines of Me- 
thodism, . . . .269 

He gives the causes of its Success, 270 

Isaac Taylor and Methodism, . 270 

He wonders at the mistakes of 
Southey, . . . .270 

His glowing eulogy of Wesley, . 270 

He Refutes the Criticisms of Cole- 
ridge, . . . .271 

More eulogies on Wesley's Life and 

Character, . . . 272 

His Opinion of the wide influence 
of Methodism, . . . 272 

What it has done for the Church of 
England, .... 273 

And for other Denominations, . 273 

His estimate of Methodism, . 273 

He rejoices in the change of feel- 
ing toward Methodism in all 
Civilized Countries, . . 275 

General Features of Methodism 
portrayed, . . . 276 

The Earnestness of its Faith and 
Feeling, . . . .276 

Sense of God's Presence, . . 276 

Consciousness of Personal Salva- 
tion, . . . .277 

Oneness of aim and object — the 
Salvation of Sinners . .278 

Whitefield the type of Methodist 
Preachers, . . . 278 

Methodism mainly indebted to its 
unity of purpose, . . 279 

Methodism a new epoch in the 
World's History, . . .281 

The future of Methodism to be still 
more glorious, . . . 281 

The Kirk of Scotland and Metho- 
dism, .... 282 

The Opinion of it of Dr. Chalmers, 282 

North British Review and Me- 
thodism, .... 282 

The London Quarterly Review 
and Methodism, . . . 283 

Plaintive Appeal to Methodism 
from the Church of England, . 2S4 

Knickerbocker Magazine and Me- 
thodism, .... 286 

Kirwan and Methodism, . . 286 

New York Examiner and Metho- 
dism, .... 287 

Christian Examiner and Metho- 
dism, .... 288 

Methodism at last generally appre- 
ciated and even eulogized, . 291 



CHAPTER VI. 



Methodism the Recovered Ideal of 
Christianity — The First Oause 
of its Success, . 293-366 
Original condition of Mankind, . 295 
Love to the Supreme Being uni- . 
versa!, .... 295 



This position sustained by analogy, 295 
Loss of this love constitutes the 

fall, . . . .297 

Christianity proposes to restore it, 299 
This the fundamental idea of Reve- 
lation, . . . .300 



CONTENTS. 



xxi 



PAGE 



The doctrine of Jesus is only love 

to God and our fellow-being, . 302 
Adaptation of this System of Res- 
toration, . . . .304 
Social Power of its Central Prin- 
ciple, . . . 306 | 
Doctrine of the Apostles, . . 30S 
The Apostolic practice, . . 309 i 
Argument from St. Paul, . . 310 
Dr. Adam Clark and Dr. Cudworth, 312 
The Doctrine of Recovery stated 

Psychologically, . .313 
Argument from Personal Con- 
sciousness, . . . 315 
Relation of the Intellect to the 

Moral Recovery of Mankind, . 816 
Moral Conduct not based on Men- 
tal Condition or Mental Convic- 
tions, . . . .317 
Opinions have but little Influence 

on our Practical Conduct, . 317 

Singular Illustration of this Fact, 318 

Many similar Illustrations, . 319 

Confessions of Faith of little value, 321 

Substance of Christianity, . . 822 
Perversion and Corruption of Chris- 
tianity, . . . .323 

Leaned first toward Judaism, . 824 

Nest toward Paganism, . . 324 
The Philosophizing Christian Fa- 
thers, . . . .325 

Introduction of Platonism, . 326 

Introduction of Aristotelianism, . 327 
Consummation of these corruptions 

the establishment of Popery, . 328 

Vigorous attempts at Reformation, 829 

They continue through many ages, 330 
They ultimate in the Lutheran Re- 
formation, . . .332 
Services of Luther to the Christian 

Ideal, .... 333 

He did not restore it, . . 384 

He is not clear nor consistent, . 335 
Melancthon did not restore the 

Ideal, . . . .338 

Zuinglius did not restore it, . 339 

Calvin did not restore it, . . 340 
Controversies between Zuinglius 

and Luther, . . . 340 



PAGE 

Calvin rested the Reformation on 
the reception of Articies of Faith, 342 

He pushed this Principle to great 

extremes, .... 343 

His Treatment of Servetus, . 344 

The two grand points of the Refor- 
mation, .... 846 

One, the necessity of Regeneration, 
Good, . . . .346 

The other, necessity of Signing a 

Creed, Bad, . . .347 

Propagation of this erroneous Prin- 
ciple, .... 347 

How the Puritans strove against it 
in Old England, . . .347 

How they received and enforced 
it in New England, . . 349 

Advent of Wesley, . . .350 

Condition of Christianity at this 
Epoch, .... 850 

Wesley's Feelings, . . . 352 

His Rejection of the second ele- 
ment of the Lutheran Reforma- 
tion, . .353 

He seizes the Doctrine of Regene- 
ration, .... 353 

He Rejects the necessity of Articles 
of Faith, .... 354 

Extensive Quotations in Proof, . 854 

His Appeal to the Faculty and Stu- 
dents of Oxford, . . . 355 

He Proclaims the Religion of the 
Heart and Life, . . . 356 

He makes it the only thing needful 
for Church Membership, . . 857 

What this Religion of the Heart is, 857 

Its Universal Catholicity, . . 359 

Wesley condemns Opinions as ne- 
cessary to Christian Fellowship, 360 

Great Liberality of Methodism, . 362 

Glorious Declaration of Mr. Wes- 
ley, . . . * . 363 

What value there is in Articles of 
Faith, .... 364 

Methodism must be grateful to 
thoughtful people who admire 
Liberty of Opinion, . . 865 

It is a recovery of the original 
Ideal of the Christian System, . 366 



CHAPTER VII. 



PAGE 

Methodism in Relation to the Re- 
production, Preservation, and 
Propagation of the Ideal 
Christianity— The Second Cause 
of its Success, . . 367-4S4 
Unity of Purpose of Original 

Christianity, . . . 367 
Example of Jesus . . . 367 
His Statements on the Subject, . 368 
His one Work a Work of Reconci- 
liation, .... 368 
His Apostles followed his Example, 371 
The great success of original Chris- 
tianity, . . . .373 



This Unity of Purpose afterward 

lost, . . . .373 
It was not recovered by the Refor- 
mation, .... 373 
Position of John Wesley, . . 374 
Character of his Preaching, . 375 
This Unity of Object transferred to 

his Successors, . . . 376 

Then* consequent Success,- . . 378 
But Methodism preserves what it 

Produces, . . . 87S 
The Life of a Methodist portrayed, 879 
How a Member is elevated to Office, 3S3 
His personal Piety his best Recom- 
mendation, . . . 8S3 



XXII CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

How he becomes a Minister, . 3S5 
Personal Piety still his best Quali- 
fication, .... 385 
Questions proposed to Candidates 

for the Ministry, . . . 3S5 

Methodism but an embodiment of 

Personal Religion, . . 3S6 

AVhat is the Office of a Minister ? . 3t>6 
What is the value of Education ? . 3S7 
"What use a Minister is to make of 

Piety, . . . .339 
Singleness of the work of Preaching 390 
Double purposes of those having 
to propagate Religion by debat- 
ing Creeds, . . .391 
Wesley's view of the Theory of 

Preaching, . . . 392 

1. lie employs only Religious Men 

to Preach and Propagate Re- 
ligion, . . . .393 
What such need, . . . 394 

How they might preach, . . 395 
How they do preach, . . 395 
Creeds have no prominence in their 

Work, . . . .396 
Personal Religion the main thing, 397 
Views of Methodism respecting the 

value of Ministerial Education, 397 

2. This Personal Religion the soul 

and center of the Itinerant 
System, . . . .399 
How heartfelt Piety prompts to it, 399 
Contrast between the work of 
Preaching by Stationary and 
by Itinerating Ministers, . 399 

True work of a Preacher, . . 401 

Converted men feel the spirit of 

this work, . . . .403 
Their great Success Natural, . 403 
How Personal Piety created the 

Itinerant System, . . 404 

Difficulties of the Stationary System 406 
These Difficulties stated by its 

Friends, .... 407 
A pitiful Picture of them, . . 40S 
The System of Dissenters a relief 
from the worse practice of the 
Church of England, . . 412 

Theory of Methodist Evangeliza- 
tion, . . . . 414 
Founded on Natural Right, . 416 

Not an Oppression of the People, . 416 
Identical with the Practice of Jesus 

and his Apostles, . . . 417 
Wonderful Success of the System, 418 

3. Personal Religion the basis of 

the Methodistic mode of 
Preaching, . . . 422 
Four modes of Speaking, . . 422 

Heartfelt Piety Naturally Extem- 
poraneous, . . . 423 
A Decline of Fervor reduces this 

Style to the Premeditative, . 424 
This style portrayed, . . 426 

It was the style of Hortensius and 

of Cicero, .... 427 
A further Decline of Fervor drops 
into the mode of Writing and 
Reciting, . . . 42S 



PAGE 

Demosthenes an exception, . 423 
Cicero tried and condemned this 
Method, .... 428 
i His own Statements on the Subject, 429 
i Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates on 

Eloquence as an Art, . . 430 

I Writing and Reciting almost Uni- 
versally rejected, . . . 430 
| Examples of British and American 

Orators, . . . .431 
The lowest Decline of Feeling pro- 
ductive of the Writing and Read- 
ing Method, . . . 432 
Burke in the British Parliament, . 433 
Senator Hill in the American Con- 



gress. .... 433 
Reading never the mode of any 

Deliberative Assembly, . . 433 
Reading condemned by the nature 

of the case, . . . 434 
Some Denominations practice Read- 
ing, .... 435 
Dr. Wayland's Picture of a Speak- 
ing Minister, . . . 436 
His Picture of a Reading Minister, 437 
Position of Sermon-readers by Dr. 

Shepard, . . . . 43S 
Dr. Shepard's statement con- 
demned by all the great Orators 

and Teachers of Elocution, . 439 
Writing but not Reading advocated 

by Cicero, .... 439 
The Example of Hortensius, . 439 
What Aristotle says about Oratory, 441 
What Cicero says about it, . 442 
What Quintilian says about it, . 443 
Quintilian's Portraiture of Speak- 
ing, .... 444 
He condemns the Reading Method, 445 
How he sums up the great work of 

Addressing Public Bodies, . 446 
Demosthenes not an example in 

favor of Sermon-reading, . 443 
Demades, who never wrote, his 

superior, .... 449 
Demades did not dare to write, . 450 
Robert Hall as a Speaker, . . 451 
George Whitefield as a Speaker, . 455 
Opinion of Dr. Franklin, . . 453 
Dr. Southey's Description of White- 
field, .... 455 
Rev. Dr. Edwards against Read- 
ing, .... 457 
Sir Richard Blackmore against it, 457 
Archbishop Leighton against it, . 458 
These Writers agree with the Greek 

and Roman Classics, . . 459 
The British Standard against 

Reading Sermons, . . 461 

Methodism against the practice, . 461 

Reading strangely maintained, . 462 

The Bar universally against it, . 463 

Parliamentary authority against it, 464 
Daniel Webster's Example and 

Success,. .... 466 

His great Speech in Reply to Hayne 467 
Practice of Jesus and his Apostles 

opposed to the Reading Method, 470 

The Primitive Church against it, . 471 



CONTENTS. 



XX111 



Wesley and his coadjutors as 
Speakers, .... 472 

Advantages of the Speaking over 
the Reading Method, . . 473 

It has contributed largely to the 
Success of Methodism, . . 475 



PAGE 

4. Personal Religion gave Direc- 
tion to the Work of Methodism, 477 
Isaac Taylor's Observation, . 477 
Lady Huntington began her work at 

the summit of Society and failed, 477 
Wesley began at its base and 
succeeded, . . . 480 



CHAPTER VIII. 



Methodism the Recovery of the 

Ideal of Religious Life and 

Worship, . . . 4S5-5SS 
The Power of Religion seen in its 

system of Religious Worship, . 
Story of Flaminius, 
Basis of Religious Worship, 
Origin of Religious Worship, 
History of it from Abel to Abraham 
Its History from Abraham to Moses 
Its History from Moses to Jesus, . 
The two parts of the original 

Hebrew Worship, 
The Typical Worship closed by 

the advent of Jesus, 
The Spiritual Worship adopted 

and continued by Jesus and his 

Apostles, .... 
All Pagan Systems Corruptions of 

the Hebrew, 
One common practice in Pagan 

and Hebrew Worship, 
The six parts of Religious Worship 

as established by Jesus, . 
The Apostolic Church continues 

them, .... 
Post-Apostolic Church continues 

them .... 
Testimony of Tertulian and Justin 

Martyr, .... 
SingiDg not mentioned by Justin, . 
This defect supplied by Pliny, 
Testimony of the earliest Writers, 
This simplicity of Worship soon 

corrupted, 
Judaism Corrupted it, 
Paganism Corrupted it, 
Progress of this two-fold Corruption 
Still further Progress, 
/. Delineation of Roman Worship, 
Its development very gradual, 
So slow that much of it is quite 

recent, .... 
The Roman Breviary and Missal, . 
Roman division of the day, 

1. The Matin Services Portrayed, 

2. Services at Prime, 

3. Third-Hour Service, 

4. Sixth-Hour Service, 

5. Ninth-Hour Service, 

6. Vespers, . 

7. Compline, 

Idolatry of the Roman Worship, . 
No Personal Religion in it, . 
II. Delineation of the Worship of 
the Greek Catholics, 
Warmth of the Oriental mind, 
Consequent excess of Corruption, 



4S5 
485 
4S6 
488 
4S9 
490 
490 

491 

491 



493 
496 



497 
498 



500 
502 
502 
503 

504 
505 
506 
507 
508 
509 
510 

510 
511 
512 
514 
517 
518 
518 
519 
519 
519 
520 
522 

524 
524 
524 



Greeks retain the Seven Sacra 

ments, . . . , 
Greek Priests usurp universal sway, 
Citizens can do nothing without 

their intervention, 
Fasts and Feasts of the Greek: 
Their AVorship of Saints, . 
Their Adoration of Pictures, 
Their Worship really Pagan, 
Their Liturgy so voluminous that 

their Priests cannot generally 

comprehend it, . 
Greek Worship in Russia, . 
Greek Worship in Greece itself, 
Its total Perversion and Corrup 

tion, 

III. Delineation of the Worship 
of the Ancient Gauls, . 

As ancient as any other, . 
It resisted the Corruptions of Rome 
General Description of it, . 
It was very Pure and Simple, 

IV. Origin and History of the 
Worship of the Church of 
England, 

The Puritan argument against Eng- 
lish Ritual as being derived from 
Rome, 

The Fact supposed not a Fact, 
Church of England of Apostolic 
Origin, 

St. Paul Visited Great Britain, 
St. Peter never there, 
Churches of Gaul and Britain in 

close Alliance, 
The old English and Gallic Rituals 

similar, 

The four Original and Independent 

Rituals, 
Antiquity of them, . , 
Roman Customs introduced into 

England, . . . 

History of these Customs in the 

English Ritual, 
English Ritual narrow and exclu 

sive, ... 
General aspect like that of Rome, 

V. Origin and Character of the 

Wesley an System of Worship, 

It is derived from that of Eng- 
land, . 

1. It is partly extemporaneous, like 
the Worship of the Primitive 
Church, . . . . 

Individual Worship must be extem- 
poraneous, 

A Liturgy well adapted to indivi- 
dual wants impossible, . 



544 
544 

544 
545 
547 



XXIV CONTENTS. 



2. It is partly Written, or Formal, 
as a portion of it must be agreed 
upon, to adapt it to the common 
use of a Congregation, . 

Jesus prescribed a form of Common 

Prayer, . . . .. 
The first Christians must have used 

such a form, 
They did use such a form, . 
Antiquity of St. Basil's Liturgy, . 
Antiquity of the Ritual of St. 

James, .... 
St. Mark's Ritual, . . . 
The Roman Missal, 
All these traceable to the Fifth 

Century, .... 
One of them to the Fourth, 
No time when Rituals were not in 

Use, 

Forms of Prayer have been used 
in nearly all sects of Christians, 

Calvin prepared one, 

Knox prepared one, 

Baxter wrote one for the English 
Puritans, .... 

Lord's Prayer older than the 
Church, .... 

Prayer at the Release of John and 
Peter, .... 

Forms first used only for the Sacra- 
ments, .... 

Methodism, though taking its Ritual 
from England, goes back to the 
practice of the original Church, 

Its Worship one of the causes of 
its great Success, . 

3. The Ritual of Methodism full 
and ample, 

The via media argument, 

Of no great value, . 

It belongs to Methodism, . 

What Methodism can say to all 

Liturgists, 
What it can say to Puritans, 



550 

550 

551 
552 
553 

553 
554 
554 

555 
555 

556 

556 
556 
556 

556 

556 

55T 

55T 



560 

561 
561 
561 
562 



PAGE 

Methodist Ritual bounded by just 
limits, .... 564 

4. Worship of Methodism a free 
Worship, .... 566 

Not so in Liturgic Denominations, 566 
Not so in the Churches of the 

Puritans and their Descendants, 567 
Woman excluded by Puritanism, . 568 
Woman excluded by Presbyterians, 568 
Inconsistency of this exclusion, • 569 
No reason for it, . .570 

Methodism does not exclude 

Woman, .... 571 
Methodism welcomes her to its 

Worship, .... 571 
Influence of Methodism upon her, 571 
Influence of Woman for Metho- 
dism, .... 572 

5. The Worship of Methodism an 
Earnest and Heartfelt Worship, 572 

Saying of Dr. Chalmers, . . 572 
Its Earnestness founded on strong 

Convictions, . . . 573 
This Earnestness in the Pulpit, . 573 
It is repeated in the Congregation, 574 
The Earnestness of Methodism not 

denied, .... 566 
It is rather charged with Extrava- 
gance, . . . .576 
This Charge Answered, . . 577 
The Reformation at first Extrava- 
gant, . . . .577 
Puritanism at first Extravagant, . 578 
Methodism followed the general 

Law of Nature, . . .578 
A full day of Wesleyan Worship, . 579 
Preparatory Services, . . 579 
Introductory Services, . . 580 
The Love-Feast, . . .580 
The Sermon, . . . 581 

The Sacraments, . . .582 
The Social Gathering, . . 584 
Conclusion and application of the 
subject, . . . .586 



METHODISM SUCCESSFUL. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE FIRST METHODIST. 

On a cold wintry night, in the month of February, 1709, 
the little rectory of Epworth, England, was discovered to be 
on fire. Within it, in addition to the good rector and his 
wife, there was a large family of children, who, with the 
servants, were sleeping the deep sleep of innocence and of 
childhood. The mother of the family, being ill at the time, 
was occupying a room separate from that of her husband ; 
and there nestled at her bosom her last-born infant, who was 
then not quite two months old. The entire household con- 
sisted of eleven or twelve persons. It was one of those nights 
when the careworn parents feel an unspoken happiness, that, 
the labors of the day being over, their charge has been put 
to rest ; and the keepers of that charge, as they lay their 
heads upon their own pillows, after having piously committed 
all to the better guardianship of Heaven, can lie under their 
roof, and enjoy, even in midwinter, in spite of the rushing 
winds and rattling storm, that feeling of security and defended 
quiet which every man at some time has felt. There is 
nothing, at this happy moment, so apt to linger upon the 
mind and give it pause ere laying ofi* its watch, as the thought 
of the possibility of fire ; and this unwelcome idea must have 
been now a besetting intruder upon the repose of the min- 
ister of Epworth ; for twice before this night, the rough and 

2 25 



26 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



roisterous hemp-growers and flax-combers of his parish, re- 
sentful to the searching ministrations of his pulpit, had 
attempted to fire his dwelling. It was a most evil time for 
such a deed ; but evil men choose not in mercy their oppor- 
tunity. A little after midnight, a brand from the burning 
roof fell upon the bed where one of the elder children was 
sleeping, and burnt her feet ; and about the same moment 
the cry of "fire" resounded from without. The father was 
roused by it. He knew at once what the dismal note meant. 
Rushing through the smoke to the apartment of his wife, he 
bade her and the two eldest girls to rise and secure their 
own safety as best they might. He next burst the door of 
the nursery, where the five smaller children were sleeping 
under the supervision of the maid. She, a faithful and 
trusted servant, caught the youngest in her arms, and com- 
manded the rest to follow her. On reaching the lower hall, 
where the flames were spreading all around, they found the 
great door locked. The key was not in it. The father flew to 
an upper room and brought it down just as the staircase was 
taking fire. The door was opened ; but the flames from the 
outside were driven in with such fury by a strong northeast 
wind, which was blowing at the time, that it was found to be 
impossible to face them. Some of the children, the larger 
ones, broke through the nearest windows, and so effected 
their escape. The smaller ones, in charge of the faithful 
maid, ran out through a little door in the rear of the house 
into the garden. The mother could not reach the garden 
door; and her condition did not admit of her climbing to 
the windows. After three ineffectual efforts to face the 
flames and make her way through the hall door, she de- 
liberately stood long enough in the midst of the devouring 
element to ask help of God ; and then she walked straight 
forward through smoke and fire to the open air. Her own 
expression was that she waded through the fire ; and, though 
in her night dress, she escaped without injury, excepting a 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



27 



little scorching of her hands and face. The father, having as 
soon as possible assembled his household, found to his horror 
that one of them, a boy of six years, was missing. He ran to 
the hall, and finding that the staircase would no longer bear 
his weight, and seeing that the house itself could stand but a 
few moments longer, fell upon his knees amidst the burning 
ruins, and commended the soul of his child to God. The 
little boy, in the meantime, had been awakened, and com- 
menced calling for the maid. The maid not answering, he 
ran to the door and found everything about him in a blaze. 
With remarkable sagacity and great presence of mind, far 
beyond what could be expected of his years, he made his 
way to a high window, where, by mounting upon a chest, he 
showed himself in the light of the fire to the crowd below. 
There was not a moment to be lost. Not waiting for a 
ladder, several of the bystanders formed a close circle by 
locking their arms and shoulders together, when another 
leaped up and stood upon them, when he found himself near 
enough to the child to take him as he dropt himself from his 
perilous position. Immediately, the roof fell in, and all that 
had been the home of a quiet and sleeping family, but an 
hour before, — building, furniture, clothing, books, manu- 
scripts, everything — was one mass of raging and relentless 
flame. The family, however, had been saved; and as the 
good old clergyman received into his arms the last of his 
rescued children, he exclaimed : " Come, neighbors, let us 
kneel down : let us give thanks to God ! he has given me all 
of my eight children : let the house go, lam rich enough /" 1 

1 Southey (" Life of Wesley," vol. i. p. 59, Harp. Ed.) says that " Mr. "Wes- 
ley was roused by a cry of fire, little imagining that it was in his own 
house," which is making a very stupid man of the learned old rector, whose 
dwelling had been twice fired by the same hands before. It must be 
remembered, however, that the same man who wrote this Tory memoir 
of Wesley, was also the author of the Red-republican Wat Tyler ; and we 



28 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



The reader need scarcely be informed that the lad here 
rescued, as it were at the last moment, and under circum- 
stances so impressive, was John Wesley, son of Rev. Samuel 
Wesley, a learned and very pious clergyman of the Church 
of England ; nor can it be supposed that a boy of his charac- 
ter, as it was afterward known to be, could pass through 
such a scene, without receiving from it a mark that should 
never leave him ; and all the events of that memorable night, 
which swept away from that family every earthly treasure, 
as they would necessarily proceed and form the constant 
topics of domestic conversation, would not fail to make 
deeper and deeper this original impression. The father had 
a home to provide among a people who had not entirely 
appreciated his labors ; he had a house to build out of the 
scanty surplus or savings of his humble living ; he had a 
wardrobe to buy, not for himself only, but for every member 
of his family ; he had a library to obtain, without which 
a man of his literary tastes would scarcely feel himself to be 
a living being ; and all these things had to be talked over, 
time after time, in the presence of his children. The one 
great topic, however, with a person of his pure and lofty 
piety, would always be, as we know it always was, the debt 
of gratitude he owed a gracious Providence for sparing to 
him every member of his family ; nor could any individual 
of the number feel anything less than a special gratitude for 
the rescue of little John, who, had he not been roused at the 
very moment, or had the thought not struck him instantly 
of climbing to the window that he might be seen, would have 
perished amidst the flames of that conflagration. He himself, 
a child of precocious thought and remarkable sensibility, not 
only from his own reflections, but from the incessant allusions 
to the subject in the family, became so possessed with the 

are therefore to expect from him, not only some confusion of facts, but 
some contradictions to human nature. 



THE FIE ST METHODIST. 



29 



idea of his indebtedness to God for his escape, that it ever 
afterward constituted in his own mind the great era of his 
existence. The older he became, the more he reflected on 
it, and the profounder hold it took upon his heart. His 
mother, a woman of extraordinary abilities and exalted piety, 
seeing the turn the incident was taking in the mind of her 
most promising if not darling child, did not fail to cherish it. 
She gave it a still more decidedly religious direction ; she 
ventured sometimes to make the boy see in it a meaning 
quite beyond the significance of ordinary events, as if Provi- 
dence might have spared him for some special good ; and 
this presumption she piously supported by referring to him- 
self, mainly at least, a curious fact connected with the fire 
which has not been mentioned. The day after it, the father 
of the family was walking around among the ruins of his for- 
mer home, meditating deeply and solemnly on the dispensa- 
tion of the previous night, and perhaps seeking for some 
relic, some memorial, of all that he had lost, when he saw 
and picked up the fragment of a leaf of his favorite polyglot 
Bible, scorched on every side of it, and so entirely burnt as 
to leave on it only the following few words of the Latin Tes- 
tament : " Yade, vende omnia quaa habes, et attole crucem, 
et sequere me." This was all he could find of what had once 
been the well-stored manse at Epworth ; he carried it to his 
wife ; and she, to make the whole event as deep and lasting 
an impression as might be on the one she thought most likely 
to receive it, laid it up and often translated it, and that with 
a personal emphasis, to little John : " Go, sell all that thou 
hast, and take up thy cross, and folloio me /" 

John, however, was not only a thoughtful, but a joyous 
and sprightly boy. His sports were those of other children ; 
but, amidst all his exuberant frolic, there settled down upon 
him a serious underlying of sentiment and reflection ; and he 
seemed, from the period of the fire, to have put on the habit 
of something like what would be expected of a youthful pre- 



30 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



sentiment of what he was to be. At home, after the restora- 
tion of the rectory, he remained the pupil of his mother, as 
there is no account of his ever having attended school in his 
native village ; but we soon find him an object of particular 
observation at the parish church ; for his father admitted 
him to the communion table, in company with the older 
communicants, when he was only eight years old ; and this 
precocity of development of his religious nature followed 
him to the Charter-House, where he became a studious and 
energetic scholar in the year 1714, when he was only eleven 
years of age. During all the time that he continued at this 
preparatory school, he was noted for his buoyancy of dispo- 
sition, and for a severity of purpose, which so seldom unite 
in the character even of a man. Though fond of recrea- 
tion, especially that of an intellectual bearing, such as read- 
ing and conversation in little clubs, it was evident to all his 
associates, and particularly to the master of the institution, 
that there was a self-consciousness within him which boys 
but seldom have. The fire at Epworth was still bright in 
his memory, and it may be burning in his heart. 2 

The next thing we see of him, he is settled down at 

2 Among his singularities while at this school, it is mentioned by 
Southey (" Life of Wesley," vol. i. p. 60) and emphasized by Isaac Taylor 
("Wesley and Methodism") that he was in the habit of stirring his blood 
every morning, in the way of paying up for his incessant application, by 
running three times — always just three times — around a certain inclosure 
in his neighborhood. Here we see, in the boy, the economy and method 
of the man. Walking required too much time ; nor would any exercise be 
availing, or persevered in, unless made habitual; and so, he who was then 
a sort of a little method-ist without knowing it, must have set times to 
run. But here, again, the boy would be robbed of his characteristics ; 
for the practice was recommended by his father ; but how many fathers 
have advised similar acts to their children with no other result than for- 
getfulness, or neglect. It was the virtue of little John, that every such 
piece of advice found in him a groundwork in which it could not help but 
stick ! 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



31 



Oxford, at the age of sixteen years, as a student of Christ- 
Church College, where he is at once recognized as a youth 
of modest but self-relying aspect, respectful to his superiors, 
obedient to order, diligent in his studies, and exceedingly 
attentive to the cultivation of his moral nature. Possessed 
of that hilarity of soul, which would seem to have marked 
him out as a special devotee of pleasure, he continued to 
enjoy the world with exemplary moderation, w r hile he pro- 
ceeded to become more and more the embodiment of his 
mother's idea, that he w r as born, or rather saved, for some 
solemn and worthy end. His mother's influence, in fact, con- 
tinued still to act upon him. She w r as everywhere a felt 
presence with him. He and his father used to exchange 
occasional letters on purely literary topics ; but, with or 
without occasion, his mother's pen was always busy with his 
religious culture ; and he was himself not slow to profit by 
her precepts, and even to listen to the half-covert sugges- 
tions, or suggestive hints and glimpses, that God would 
scarcely have interposed to rouse him from his childhood 
sleep, and inspire him with a sagacity for the moment so far 
beyond his years, if he was to grow up to be, after all, but 
an ordinary man. The thought, however, whether coming 
from maternal hints, or from the swellings of his own heart, 
never made him for one moment arrogant, or vain. He was 
altogether the more humble for it. He toiled also the 
harder at his books, that he might the better jnepare himself 
for that mission, for which he now dreamed he had been 
preserved ; and precisely here, too, will be found the solution 
of that singular course of life, which, about this time, he 
undertook to lead. Religion, instead of being an incident to 
life, as with society about him, began to be with him nothing 
less than life itself. Nor was the service of God to be any 
doubtful, or half-way affair, if he, the servant, had really 
received such a signal rescue at his hands. Besides giving 
himself up to the study of the Scriptures, he collected a little 



32 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



company of his college friends, who, following his directions, 
entered upon the observance of every duty that was sup- 
posed to pertain to a serious and earnest life. The nightly 
meetings of this youthful band, however, were no gatherings 
of a set of moody and melancholy monks ; for any circle of 
which the brilliant and witty student of Christ-Church, and 
afterward fellow of Lincoln College, John Wesley, was the 
center, must be full of the splendors of a heartfelt joy ; but, in 
the midst of a great amount of native cheerfulness, which 
must have communicated itself to the most sober of his com- 
panions, there remained that settled style of deep and 
thorough thinking, which had gradually grown up in him 
from the period and event of the Epworth conflagration. 
They read u The Christian's Pattern" and "The Rules of 
Holy Living and Dying " as if these works had been fictions 
and the readers young bloods of no purpose in life higher 
than a momentary pleasure. They commented upon these 
productions ; and whenever they found points beyond their 
depth, young Wesley, still conscious of the source of the 
better part of all his instructions in religion, would write to 
his mother for her solutions ; and she, after answering his 
inquiries with an ability not then common in her sex, and 
settling questions in polemical theology as if she had studied 
nothing else, would scarcely ever omit to improve the op- 
portunity of recalling him, again and again, to the me- * 
morable incident of his early years, and to the high and 
peculiar work for which he had been so wonderfully pre- 
served. He passed through his collegiate course with 
great distinction ; he was noted for his profound and splen- 
did scholarship ; he manifested every token of a purely 
literary life ; he was elected a fellow of Lincoln College by 
those who had long known his acquisitions and his gifts ; 
he took the chair of instruction in the most erudite literary 
institution of his country, if not of his age; but litera- 
ture, after all, dear as it was to him, could givo him no 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



33 



such success, no such honor, as to drown that loftier impulse 
acquired from his mother's counsels, which was now begin- 
ning to take its place within him as a settled conviction of his 
mind and heart. To the little company at first formed, so 
far as they still remained, he added such of his pupils as 
desired to join him in his effort to lead a true and noble life ; 
and when the storm of sarcasm, and afterward of persecution, 
which is so sure to fall upon anything so singular in a college, 
began to beat with greater and greater fury upon their 
heads, he stood as firm as a pillar, while the larger part of 
his associates left him to the ridicule and reproaches of those 
of the university, professors as well as scholars, who had 
undertaken to be his foes. A sense of his mission still held 
him up ; his mother's prophecy was beginning in earnest to 
fulfill itself; and even the father now undertook to defend 
and encourage him in his course ; but there was no power so 
strong as that inward feeling, by this time entirely his own, 
that God had saved him from imminent destruction for the 
performance of some work which no other man had done. 
His father now urged him to leave the classic shades of 
Oxford and become his curate at Epworth, which could 
hardly fail, in that case, to remain in the family after his own 
decease ; but the work which the son had begun in college, 
though now reduced, by the causes just alluded to, from 
twenty-five to five individuals, would have gone to ruin in his 
absence ; and this, in that son's opinion, was a matter of 
more consequence than the preservation of the Epworth liv- 
ing to his father's family. So he remained at Oxford, pro- 
ceeding with his studies, but more particularly with the 
building up of his little club of praying students. This, of 
course, would be looked upon as a singularity ; but a per- 
son whom God had saved in a peculiar manner had a right 
to some peculiarity ; and, therefore, neither the entreaties 
of his relations, nor the opposition of the world, could move 
him from his purpose. He was eager to be singular, if he 

2* 



34 



THE FIEST METHODIST. 



could thereby accomplish something, he as yet knew not 
what, which should be worthy of him by whose interposition 
he had been rescued ; and thus, instead of slacking his hand 
at the instance of whatever opprobrium was heaped upon 
him, he only went the further in his enterprise, as if the 
resistance he met with was a proof to him of his mother's 
early and constant interpretation of his destiny. He pro- 
ceeded to lay out a regular programme of operations for 
himself and his associates. They were each day to spend a 
certain time in religious conversation with the students ; they 
were to visit the prisons at another definite hour and talk 
with the prisoners ; they were to give regular lessons, in the 
lower departments of education, to certain poor families in 
their neighborhoods ; they were to take upon themselves the 
habitual care of a school of a charitable foundation; they 
were to assume the religious oversight of the parish work- 
house; and all the hours not otherwise appropriated, they 
were to devote to such general acts of charity as they might 
find it in their way to perform. It was to be a particular 
object with them to cultivate as extensive an acquaintance 
as possible among the members of the university; and they 
at once commenced inviting them to little social breakfasts, 
where, over a dish of tea, they began to inculcate their ideas 
of the higher life. A perfect system of operations was thus 
inaugurated, of which the still youthful Wesley, though 
seconded by his brother Charles, and by such persons as 
James Hervey and George Whitefield, was the soul and 
center. He here began to feel that he was really, at last, 
beginning to fulfill the prophesy of his pious mother. 3 

3 John Wesley had written to his mother before this time that he 
should prefer to die before her; but he afterward corrected himself; 
when she, who could never omit an opportunity to touch the spring on 
which she was always pressing, answered him, " You did well to correct 
that fond desire of dying before me ; since you do not know what work 
God may have for you to do ere you leave the world." 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



But a call was now made upon him which could but deepen 
this impression. His good old father had passed away, and 
with him the succession to the rectory of Epworth ; and, 
when that succession would still have offered no temptation 
to a young man who believed himself to have been spared to 
the world for no ordinary position, and for no common labors 
and sacrifices, his heart beat quick to a summons of an un- 
usual character at that period. He was invited to go out to 
Georgia, a British colony, as a missionary to the Indian popu- 
lation. Here was something new, something out of the 
common track, something having an affinity to the great 
thought which had been, for so long a time, swelling in his 
bosom. He accepted the overtures made him. He went 
out. He labored industriously and faithfully. Pie was too 
strict, however, to be at onoe successful among a motley 
crowd of people in a new settlement like that of Georgia. 
He carried with him this sense of the peculiarity of the call 
of Providence upon him. He must do everything in his own 
way, as no one else had ever done it, if need be, or disap- 
point the greater part of his expectations. He found himself 
at once opposed to the authorities of the colony, unpopular 
with the raw inhabitants, comparatively useless to the Indi- 
ans, and in almost every way discountenanced, discouraged, 
and unsuccessful. He returned to his native land, humbled 
but not cast down ; for his ruling idea was sufficient to sus- 
tain hiin ; the very failure of his plans was to him but a part 
of a greater plan of Providence to qualify him for some more 
important labor ; and thus, whether at home or abroad, 
whether in prosperity or adversity, he was everywhere toil- 
ing in the light, and feeling the influence, of the fire of Ej> 
worth. 4 

4 Dr. Emory (" Life of "Wesley," by Watson, p. 41) has shown the pro- 
per contempt for the silly slanders against the moral rectitude of Mr. Wes- 
ley -while in Georgia. The simple truth is, that he paid some attention to 
a Miss Hopkey ; that he at length became satisfied of her being not only 



36 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



On his way to America, he had crossed the ocean in com- 
pany with some deeply experienced and devoted Moravian 
missionaries ; he had received from them a new idea of per- 
sonal religion ; he now meditated on that idea without 
cessation, and sought from another of the Brethren, whom 
he had found in London, further instructions in relation to 
it ; he read, prayed and struggled to come into such a heart- 
felt experience of regenerating grace as had been pointed 
out to him ; and the result was, that on a certain evening, 
the exact date being the 24th day of May, 1738, at a quarter 
to nine o'clock, while listening with profound attention to 
the reading of what Luther says in relation to the new birth 
in his " Preface to the Epistle to the Romans," he felt a new 
and strange emotion break upon his heart, which seemed to 
him, upon reflection, to satisfy all the conditions of the 
change spoken of by the great Saxon Reformer, and every 
mark of it as given him by the Moravians- Filled to over- 
flowing with peace, and gratitude, and joy, he sought out 
Peter Bolder, the Moravian Brother just alluded to, who 
was about establishing a mission in the heart of London. 
He compared experiences with Bolder, and he found his own 
to correspond to his temporary pattern ; but wishing to be 
made doubly certain of his real state, and thinking, it is pro- 
bable, that no pains could be too great for one who was to 
act some considerable part on the theater of life, he resolved 

an unfit person to be his wife, but not worthy of the Christian name ; and, 
therefore, after he had ceased to have any intercourse with her whatso- 
ever, he declined to admit her to the communion table of his parish. Such 
events might happen, in ordinary individuals, a thousand times without 
eliciting a remark, or with the entire approbation of the public ; but the 
authorities of the colony detested Mr. Wesley for the strictness of his 
doctrines; the people despised him -for the severity of his discipline ; and 
thus, between the two classes, with the silence or assistance of the lady 
herself, it was easy, in a raw settlement, to get up and propagate a perse- 
cution and a story, the only value of which now is the useful lesson, that 
the best of men are apt to be the most basely slandered ! 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



37 



to visit Hernkut and converse with the most enlightened of 
this devoted and intelligent fraternity ; and so, after laying 
out his inward life to the examination of Count Zinzendorf, 
and to the elders of Hernhut, and listening to several ex- 
ceedingly happy discourses, public and private, on the 
nature, proofs and fruit of the interior life of faith, he re- 
turned again to England with a full assurance that he was 
now a new creature in Christ Jesus, who, the free gift of the 
everlasting Father, was consciously "formed within him," 
and to whom he had solemnly consecrated every talent and 
every power he possessed by vows never to be forgotten. 

Now it was, when he had passed through this long period 
of preparation, and with his heart bounding at the thought 
that he was at last indeed about to start on the great mission 
of his life, that be looked again over the path he had already 
pursued, and forward to the yet indefinable work which he 
more than ever felt that he was called to do. One thing, 
however, is to be specially remembered. If, at any former 
time, while pondering upon the oft-repeated suggestions of 
his mother, or listening to the aspirations of his own nature, 
he had ever been conscious of a little worldly pride, or per- 
sonal aggrandizement, no such thought, no feeling of this 
character had now the smallest place within him. Everything 
personal, everything that had been ever so slightly shaded 
with ambition in an unworthy sense, had passed away for- 
ever. Not only had his failure in America served to humble 
him, as he now openly acknowledged, but the deep work of 
repentance and faith toward God, the very nature of which 
it is to prostrate all self-reliance, at least all independence of 
a higher Power, had swept him clean of every kind and 
degree of selfishness. He had now gone through another 
conflagration ; all his earth-given treasures were but a heap 
of good-for-nothing ashes ; and he began to say to every one 
about him, as often as he was inquired of in relation to his 
condition, that he w T as "nothing but a sinner saved by 



38 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



grace." Having no settlement, and desiring none, he had no 
alternative but to preach promiscuously, wherever a pulpit 
happened to be opened to him. Every congregation he 
addressed was stirred to its very depths by the novelty and 
power of his proclamations. The great metropolis was 
roused. All ranks, all classes, followed him. His mark was 
soon made. His character was at once known. His reputa- 
tion was not only established, but sounded abroad, both far 
and near. He was no longer an ordinary man. He preached 
as no other clergyman did in the churches where he minis- 
tered. He told the people, in plain bold terms, that his sins 
were pardoned, that a new and glorious life had sprung up 
within him, by the power of the eternal Spirit, and that they 
needed this salvation, and might every one enjoy it, as well 
as he. He had now begun, in a word, that great and hitherto 
unknown work, for which he still believed, though now with 
an oppressive sense of his corresponding responsibility, that 
God had so remarkably preserved him from the burning 
rectory at Epworth. This incident still stood fresh in his 
recollection. It yet remained as the exponent of his former 
life. It was more than ever the finger of Providence that 
pointed out his future ; and it was at this grand opening of 
his career, that, being called on to have his portrait taken, 
he finally consented ; but had engraved below it a house on 
fire, with the motto underneath : " Is not this a brand 
plucked from the burning ?" as if these words expressed, 
as they really did, the life-long conviction never before so 
plainly uttered, but which had always been the secret and 
sacred burden of his soul ! 

Here, then, we have before us the first Methodist. His 
history begins, not with his conversion, but with that terri- 
ble moment when he was taken from the burning manse, 
after he had been given up to his fate to perish in the flames 
of that fearful conflagration. His conversion, instead of 
being the beginning, was the completion of a process, which 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



39 



had been for just thirty years going on within him.. That 
almost miraculous preservation of his life is the starting 
point from which his subsequent existence, with all that 
there is in it, dates. It is the germ that expanded, under a 
variety of circumstances, and finally became a grown and per- 
fect plant at the instant of his regeneration. It is the nut of 
the tree which has since spread out such a lofty crown of 
branches, and which has dropped such harvests of golden 
fruit on the soil of so many countries. No man without 
first knowing this fact, and giving it its due place, can ever 
understand the secret history and real character of that re- 
markable individual, of whom Methodism is but little else 
than a general expansion. We may read his most memor- 
able deeds ; we may hang over the pages that relate to us 
his wonderful career ; we may write and peruse brilliant 
histories, not only of himself, but of the great enterprise 
set into operation by him; but if we begin not here to 
study him and his achievement, our knowledge of the great 
Wesleyan Revival will be simply superficial. Our true 
course is to place the foot of our historic compass at this 
point du jour of his earthly career, and then, taking for our 
radius the distance between this point and the hour of his 
birth to God, strike the arc that shall cut that hour 
exactly ; for between the two we shall find everything that 
needs to be studied in our most critical investigations of 
what he was ; and in what he was, from the first to the 
second of these periods, we shall also discover every ele- 
ment afterward brought out by Providence and wrought 
into what is now known as universal Methodism. It is not 
the purpose of these pages to relate the facts, either of Mr. 
Wesley's life, or of the system brought into existence by his 
agency. It is their design to get below the facts ; to de- 
termine their origin and their consequences ; and, in the 
prosecution of this plan, the first thing was to set before the 
reader the leading idea by whose force the illustrious 



40 



THE FIEST METHODIST. 



Founder of Methodism became so different from all other 
clergymen of the Church of England, even at the beginning 
of his career, and the Father of a movement which has had 
no parallel since the apostolic era. We have found the so- 
lution of the problem of his life at Epworth. Standing in 
the light of that burning mass, from which the boy of six 
was taken at the latest moment, all is clear from that time 
forward. Standing at any other point, no man can give, as 
no man has given, any satisfactory reason why he was so 
entirely unlike his brothers and his father ; why he was so 
immediately marked out as a mystery at the Charter-House 
school, when he was but eleven years of age ; why, at Ox- 
ford, his advent was as noted as his graduation and subsequent 
connection with his college ; why, when he had taken orders, 
he would not accept of his father's overture of becoming his 
curate and successor, in the regular way, at Epworth ; why 
he could, nevertheless, so promptly receive the appointment 
of missionary and teacher to a strange race of people, a race 
of unlettered heathen, in a new and remote region, when he 
knew himself qualified particularly for the highest positions 
in the most civilized and enlightened country; why he could 
not be satisfied, as the best of his generation had been before 
him, with the ordinary and sufficient evidences of his conver- 
sion, but must make a pilgrimage to a foreign land for a more 
perfect satisfaction ; why, after his return, and when his repu- 
tation would have soon lifted him to almost any elevation, 
perhaps to the very highest, in the church of which he was 
an honest member, he would not settle down as a regular 
pastor, but resolved to spend his life, as it would seem, in an 
irregular itinerancy from parish to parish Avithin the Church 
of England ; and why, in a word, from the day of his con- 
version to the day of his decease, he kept on in the even 
tenor of his way, in spite of a thousand obstacles, and through 
reproaches, and sneers, and oppositions, and calumnies, and 
persecutions, which would lrave crushed the spirit and para- 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



41 



lyzed the power of any ordinary man. till he had laid the 
foundation and marked out the superstructure of a system as 
peculiar and Providential as himself. The explanation of it 
all is simply this : his mother taught him that his rescue 
from the Epworth fire was proof of his having been created 
for some extraordinary achievement in the cause of the 
church ; Wesley believed the prophecy ; and (God helping 
him), he made it true! 

With this state of the case, however, which is based upon 
the fundamental facts of the Wesleyan domestic history, 
there is no ground for transferring from the son to the 
mother the honor of having given being to his enterprise. 
It may be said, it is true, that if there had been no Susannah 
Wesley, there would have been no Methodism, because 
there would have been not only no such John Wesley as there 
w T as, but no John Wesley at all ; but this would be a very 
superficial statement, below the character of a historian, and 
certainly beneath the dignity of a critic. When John Wes- 
ley was first accused of being the father of the " Holy Club " 
at Oxford, the good old rector of Epworth laughingly ob- 
served, that, in that case, he supposed he must therefore be 
looked upon as its grandfather, as John was acknowledged 
to be his son. In the same way, Mrs. Wesley bears a causa- 
tive relation to the movement ; and she even did very much 
toward inspiring her child with the lofty ambition of doing 
some great thing for the world ; but there is, nevertheless, 
not one element of what is now known as Methodism — not 
even that of lay-preaching, which took its origin from her 
mind. She contributed not a little to the making of her son 
what he was ; she encouraged and counseled him for many 
years ; but she was no more the " mother of Methodism," as 
she has been sometimes styled, than Mrs. Newton, who was 
the good genius to little Isaac from his cradle upward, was 
thereby the author of the " Principia," or the mother of Sir 
Isaac's theory of the solar system. Some, on the other hand, 



42 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



have conferred the title of Founder of Methodism upon 
Charles Wesley, because he was the first of the club to re- 
ceive the epithet of Methodist ; but the name was given him 
before he was converted, and in the absence of his brother ; 
and it is well known, too, that instead of his having intro- 
duced any features into the system established by that bro- 
ther, he opposed the introduction of almost every one of 
them. Whitefield, also, has been honored with the title, be- 
cause he was the first to turn away from the regular places 
of religious instruction, and take to the fields, and byways, 
and hedges, as a preacher of the Gospel. It is clear, how- 
ever, from the facts of his history, that he not only turned 
away from the churches, but almost equally also from Mr. 
Wesley, without even adding, or causing to be added, or 
suggesting, a single custom which has been incorporated as 
an essential constituent into the Wesleyan system. Wesley- 
anism, in a word, is the legitimate offspring of the mind, 
heart, education, and experience of the Rev. John Wesley. 
He was a special man raised up by Providence, and fitted by 
Providential dealings, for a special work ; and he who would 
understand either the individual or his achievement, must 
study that period of his life that lies between his conversion 
and the fire at Epworth. 

Whatever may have been the origin or the character of 
Methodism, however, it had proceeded but a little way in 
the work of self-development, before its course was stopped, 
to all human appearances, by the sudden and simultaneous 
interposition of the authorities of the Church of England. 
The crowds following Mr. Wesley offended the aristocratic 
taste of the nobility ; they w r ished still to enjoy their easy 
hour in church without being suffocated by the dense masses 
of the in-rushing population ; and it is likely, too, that they 
were yet more offended by the directness and closeness of the 
new preaching. There was then, as there has ever been in 
England, too intimate a sympathy between the nobility and 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



43 



the clergy to admit of any wish of the one to go unnoticed 
by the other. Without warning, therefore, though having 
the implied sanction of the bishop from whom he had 
received ordination, Mr. Wesley was brought to a stand by 
the refusal of all the parishes of London to open their 
churches to his ministrations ; and the parishes of all the 
smaller cities, and finally those of the extreme rural districts, 
all over the island, with a common servility, soon followed 
the metropolitan example. There were no complaints, no 
charges of any character, alleged against Mr. Wesley. No 
one denied that he was a regular clergyman of the Church 
of England ; that he was a genuine and hearty believer of 
the creeds and articles ; that he had talents and acquisitions 
of the highest order ; that his personal piety was beyond all 
question and even eminent ; but the higher classes, or rather 
the highest class, felt that the air of their nobility was 
offended by the popularity of his discourses, if not by the 
personality of his appeals and applications ; and, therefore, 
without trial, without' reproof, without remonstrance, in the 
midst of a most wonderful series of successful meetings, by 
which the capital had been roused as it had never been since 
the settlement of the Reformation, nearly every church in 
Britain, as in a night, was forever shut against him. Here, 
then, was a man called of God, and set apart by the authori- 
ties of his denomination to preach the Gospel ; he had spent 
thirty years of his life in laborious and honest preparation for 
the high and sacred duties of his calling ; always zealous for 
the cause of religion, his heart now throbbed with desire to 
devote all he was to the fulfillment of the great commission ; 
would they only suffer him to go forward, with scarcely any 
other sanction, he had a manly conviction in him, that, with 
the help of heaven, which he knew had been thus far granted, 
he should be , able to rouse to life the expiring spirit of piety 
in the communion of which he was nothing less than a most 
cordial member, and impart power and triumph to the cause 



44 



THE FIRST METHODIST. 



of God throughout the island, if not the empire, of Great 
Britain. But the nobles and great gentlemen were not 
willing. The clergy, a class of worldly, irreligious, wicked 
men, with only occasional exceptions, would rather sacrifice 
the cross of Christ than lose the good opinion and patronage 
of the ruling orders. The new preacher could not be dealt 
with by law, and silenced by authority of the judges, for 
the constitution of his country was favorable, in form at 
least, to religious liberty. ISTor was Wesley an offender 
against any statute, or any canon, or any privilege of his 
profession. There was no Hall of Judgment, no Pilate, with 
power to crucify him for constructive treason ; and so, the 
only thing possible was silently to ignore, to excommunicate, 
to banish him from the threshold of every church edifice, to 
murder him by slander, and then to bury him beneath the 
weight of noble and clerical reproaches. Turning, therefore, 
with a sorrowful heart, from the tabernacles which he had 
hoped to serve, and wondering in the fervor of his soul why 
he could not be suffered to do good among his fellow-men, 
when his heart was breaking with the pent-up zeal to do it, he 
paused a moment at the outer border of the great and com- 
mon world, troubled to know his duty, then boldly and 
resolutely entered it, single-handed and alone, to execute the 
work which Providence had now more than ever committed 
to his hands. It was a most disheartening prospect for a 
man of educated sensibilities ; but let us not be discouraged ; 
we are to see more coming up, as the fruit of this man's 
labor, than from every noble and every other clergyman of 
that day in England : " He that goeth forth and weepcth 
bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with re- 
joicing, bringing his sheaves with him /" 



CHAPTER II. 



NUMERICAL STREXGTH OF METHODISM. 

Jesus, the author of our religion, was carrying the popu- 
lace of all Palestine with him, and rapidly gathering a force 
which threatened the overthrow of the national establish- 
ment, when the short-sighted Sanhedrin imagined that, if 
they could take the life of the leader of this faction, his cause 
would necessarily disintegrate and fall to pieces ; and there- 
fore, they did that very thing, by crucifying him, which was 
indispensable to the consummation of his plan of life, and 
Avhich laid the only foundation for the perpetuity and propa- 
gation of his power forever. Luther, the reformer of this 
religion, after it had been lost in the superstitions of a thou- 
sand years, lifted up the voice of warning and of instruction 
in middle Europe, and all the nations were beginning to 
listen to his mighty utterance, when his enemies so pursued 
him that he was compelled to quit the scene of his labors, 
and shut himself up in the Wartzburgh ; but, within the 
walls of his prison he executed that translation of the Scrip- 
tures, without which he could have made little further 
progress in the movement of thfi reformation ; and thus 
again the foes of the truth became the chief abettors, in the 
hand of Providence, of its prosperity and success. In the 
same way, Wesley was making good his beginning in the 
work of recovering the fallen Christianity of his country — 
was rousing the popular mind as it had not been roused since 
the days of Luther — was rapidly advancing toward a glorious 
revival of a genuine religion throughout and within the old 
church of England, when his career was suddenly arrested 

46 



4G 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



by a movement which, while it thrust him away from every 
pulpit of the established order, and from nearly all associa- 
tion with the leading members of his own denomination, 
repaid him and the world a thousand fold by turning his 
steps toward the great mass of his countrymen, who, in that 
age, were almost wholly neglected and consequently irreli- 
gious, but on whom, nevertheless, rested the best hopes and 
expectations of his nation. Had he been suffered to go for- 
ward with his plans, within the church of his choice, the 
English would have been, without doubt, the most spiritual 
national establishment existing ; it never could have become, 
however, a popular church, or possessed the means of great 
usefulness to the masses of the people ; for its entire eco- 
nomy is too elaborate and too rigid to admit of any consi- 
derable adaptation to the wants and changing habits of 
mankind ; but it would soon have put on a new appearance 
and burned with a novel splendor. This, however, was not 
to be. The Omniscient plainly saw, that the system of the 
lascivious Henry the Eighth, modified and remodeled by 
every successive monarch, and by quarreling parliament 
after parliament, as well as by every ambitious primate, was 
not the system in which the vital spirit of Christianity could 
best live, or through which it could send its best influences 
out upon the world. Wesley was rejected ; the Church of 
England lost its vitality and sunk into an immediate spiritual 
imbecility ; and a new order of things sprang up among the 
people, which, from that day forward, has been growing in a 
most marvelous manner, till it is now the most numerous, at 
least, of the evangelical denominations of modern times. 
That very Methodism, which the nobles and clergy of Great 
Britain spurned, and which they imagined they had blasted 
by the rejection of Mr. Wesley, has been since looked to by 
their successors as the chief source of whatever real spiritu- 
ality there is now in the Church of England, and by the 
world at large as the quickener to all other denominations 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



47 



on both sides of the Atlantic, while it as certainly embodies 
more religious power than the English church has ever wield- 
ed, or is likely to wield in the progress of coming time. The 
Gospel of Jesus, indeed, depends but little, if it depends at all, 
on outward circumstances. The favor of the world can do but 
little for it ; and its frown is nearly impotent against it ; for 
it is a characteristic of its history, from the days of its 
Founder forward, that the stone which the builders reject is 
almost certain, by the hand of a far-seeing Providence, to 
stand at last at the head of the corner in the uprising temple 
of the Almighty. 1 

• With shallow philosophers, and with short-sighted men in 
general, success is always the great argument ; it is all they 
want to establish the genuineness, if not the truth, of any 
enterprise ; and with the great majority of society, therefore, 
the cause of Methodism might safely rest on such a general 
assertion of its past progress, and of its present power, as 
could be made in a single paragraph. It is not, however, the 
purpose of these pages to address the credulity, or the igno- 
rance, of mankind. ISTo wholesale assent, thus gained from 
the unthinking multitude, would satisfy the demand of the 
present undertaking. Success is not the oracle, or the argu- 
ment, in religious operations. It is no criterion of right and 
wrong in any matter. Pompey was a better general than 
Csesar ; but the battle of Pharsalia made one an outcast and 
the other an emperor. The works of Francis Bacon are the 
bulwark of modern civilization ; but they are not read by a 
hundredth part as many people, at this moment, as are the 
superficial pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or the productions 

1 Isaac Taylor ("Wesley and Methodism," p. 78) makes the declaration 
very openly, that " the Episcopal Church — and many of its enlightened 
adherents have not hesitated to acknowledge this — owes to Methodism, 
in great part, the modern revival of its energies." He says the same 
thing elsewhere in relation to the influence of Methodism upon the 
Protestant denominations generally. 



4S 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



of some of our most ephemeral newspaper writers. The 
religion of Mahomet has more disciples than that of Jesus ; 
and the growth of Mormonism has been and is yet the won- 
der of the passing generation ; but there are few among men 
of intelligence in any country, who, from the success of these 
superstitions, would regard them with any reverence. Nor 
must it be overlooked, that there are persons in society, more 
than respectable for their information, who honestly contem- 
plate the progress of Methodism as a great social evil. It is, 
consequently, no certain reason for self-complacency with 
any member of this denomination, or with any one wishing 
to do them justice, that, from the most humble origin, they 
have become the largest religious body in this country, and 
the most active and successful one in Europe. Still, as it is 
the design of this volume to make a fundamental examination 
of Methodism as a system of doctrines, dicipline and worship, 
and follow every inquiry to its legitimate results, whether 
making for or against the system, it is essential, at this stage 
of the process, to determine the exact dimensions of the sub- 
ject to be examined. The problem to be solved is the suc- 
cess of Methodism ; that success, therefore, is no part of the 
solution ; but the solution cannot be reached without begin- 
ning, mathematically, with the data. The reader will conse- 
quently pass at once from the day when John Wesley, at 
the first dawn of his prosperity as a preacher, was excluded 
from all the pulpits of the Church of England, and fix his eye 
upon the facts of Methodism at the present moment. It 
may seem to be a dry and barren prospect ; but these facts 
will be found to be eloquent of truth and a full compensation 
for the most faithful examination : 

It was in the year 1738 that the leading churches of Lon 
don were shut against Mr. Wesley ; the remainder of them 
were closed in the year following ; and, therefore, the latter 
date has been fixed upon as the epoch of the origin of the 
Wesleyan system At that time, what is now known as 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



49 



Methodism was confined to one solitary person ; for his lead- 
ing views had not yet been wholy accepted by a single indi- 
vidual. George Whitefield, it is true, one of the earliest of 
the disciples of Mr. Wesley, was out in the world and hard 
at work in the proclamation of a living gospel ; he was just 
returned from the British colonies of America ; but when 
the two friends met, the die had been cast with Mr. Wesley. 
Charles Wesley, too, had preached a heartfelt religion in 
London and at Oxford; he had made himself quite peculiar 
among the clergymen of the Church of England ; but he was 
still a rank churchman ; and it was not till a number of 
years afterward, that he came fully into the temper and 
undertaking of his brother. It is, therefore, one hundred 
and twenty years, not quite a century and a quarter, since 
there was on the earth but one man known and acknow- 
ledged as a Methodist. ISTow, while there are many persons 
alive, who have listened to the sermons of the first of the 
Methodists, historians and critics, for the better comprehen- 
sion of their subject, are compelled to speak of it under the 
general divisions of English, American and Missionary Me- 
thodism ; and these have again to be divided into several 
component classes. 

I. English Methodism embraces the following subdi- 
visions : 

1. The British Wesleyan Conference, which covers with 
its operations England, Scotland, and Ireland, the field which 
was personally cultivated by Mr. Wesley, is a most flourish- 
ing and powerful organization, and reports now, in round 
numbers, twenty-five hundred preachers, and five hundred 
thousand members. 

2. The Eastern British American Conference, which 
spreads itself over the continental and insular possessions of 
the mother country on both sides of the St. Lawrence, and 
along the adjacent shores of the Atlantic, gives about one 
hundred preachers, and nearly seventeen thousand members. 

3 



50 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



3. The Canadian Wesleyan Conference, which covers the 
western portion of British America, acids about three hun- 
dred and fifty preachers, and about fifty-tico thousand mem- 
bers. 

4. The Australian Conference, which takes in all the South 
Pacific possessions of Great Britain, includes about one hun- 
dred and seventy-five preachers, and thirty-four thousand 
members. 

5. The French Conference, which, though located on a 
foreign soil, is nevertheless a branch of the English Wesleyan 
body, embraces about thirty preachers, and not far from fif- 
teen hundred members. 

6. The cluster of smaller bodies in Great Britain, known as 
Primitive Methodists, Wesleyan Reformers, the Wesleyan 
Association, New Connection Methodists, etc., all of which 
make John Wesley their great original, and whose sympa- 
thies are entirely Wesleyan, furnishes an aggregate of about 
twelve thousand preachers, and three hundred thousand 
members, they having a larger proportion of local ministers 
than is common with the Wesleyan bodies. 

II. American Methodism, also, is now presented under 
several departments : 

1. The Methodist Episcopal Church, which covers all the 
free States and Territories, and extends far over the border 
of the slaveholding States, reports, without mentioning frac- 
tions, fourteen thousand preachers, and but a trifle less than 
one million of church members, including members by pro- 
bation. 

2. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which is con- 
fined mainly to the slaveholding States, furnishes eight thou- 
sand preachers, and about seven hundred thousand members. 

3. The Wesleyan Methodists of the United States, a 
branch from the Methodist Episcopal Church, now report 
about three hundred preachers, and nearly twenty -five thott- 
sand members. 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



51 



4. The Canada Methodist Episcopal Church, which is an- 
other branch from the Methodist Episcopal Church of the 
United States, reports about four hundred, preachers, of 
which nearly half are traveling ministers, and about fifteen 
thousand members. 

5. The Protestant Methodist Church of the United States, 
still another branch from the same parental stock, is a small 
but effective body of Wesleyans, who claim to have nearly a 
thousand preachers, and almost a hundred thousand mem- 
bers. 

III. Missionary Methodism, including all the missions of 
the parent bodies as above enumerated, is not annually pub- 
lished ; but the reader will obtain some idea of their number 
and extent by the following approximations, and it has been 
the purpose of the writer to fall within, rather than overstep, 
the actual statistics : 

1. The Home Missionary department of British Methodism 
is not a separate organization, as the itinerant plan of preach- 
ing is itself a missionary system, but is included, so far as the 
number of ministers and members are concerned, in the re- 
turns of the English Conference. 

2. The Foreign Missionary Society of the British Wes- 
leyan body is the largest, most active, and most successful 
organization of its kind in the Protestant world. It has 
the honor of being the first Protestant missionary society of 
the two nations speaking the English language ; and its sta- 
tistical tables may be compared with those of any similar 
associations of modern times. It employs nearly six hundred. 
missionaries, and almost a thousand other persons assisting 
in its wide-spread operations. Xearly four thousand chapels 
and other preaching places are filled weekly with the objects 
of its beneficence, who, including those engaged in the daily 
labor of the missions, embrace a population, all in foreign 
countries, of not less than six hundred thousand individuals. 
It employs about four hundred ministers ; keeps eight print- 



52 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



ing presses in operation ; gives Sabbath-school instruction to 
about one hundred thousand children ; and raises annually, 
for the support of all these foreign works, about six hundred 
thousand dollars. 2 

3. The Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, representing that branch of American Methodism 
which embraces the non-slaveholding States, is a well-organized 
institution, of good past success, and increasingly active in 
its operations. In its foreign department, it has missions in 
Africa, in China, in South America, in Germany, in Sweden, 
in Norway, in Denmark, in Bulgaria, and in India ; in its 
domestic department, it employs two hundred and forty -one 
missionaries among the Germans, eleven among the Welsh, 
two among the French, twenty-nine among the Scandinavians 
and nineteen among the Indians of the United States and 
Territories ; and the whole force of its foreign and domestic 
missionaries, lay and clerical, whose labors are confined to 
foreign populations, is at this date just six hundred and 
thirty-six. The number employed on missions to the native 
population of the United States does not show itself in the 
returns of the Missionary Society, but is mixed with the 
regular statistics of the annual conferences ; and yet it is 
quite within the facts to set them down as not less than sivffi- 
cient to make the sum total of persons engaged as mission- 
aries, in the proper sense of the term, at a round eight 
hundred. 

4. The Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal 
.Church South, is a very recent organization ; but it has 
commenced with great vigor its domestic and foreign opera- 
tions ; and it is beginning to take a high position among the 
benevolent institutions of our country. In its domestic work, 
it keeps a present force of over one hundred and sixty 

2 The real existence of the TVesleyan Missions dates from the appoint- 
ment of Dr. Coke, in 1*784, as the Superintendent, under the British Con- 
ference, of the foreign operations of Methodism. 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



53 



missionaries looking after the mixed populations of destitute 
and otherwise neglected portions of the southern States ; it 
sends about thirty to the aborigines of our southwestern 
forests ; it employs fifteen or twenty among the German 
and other foreign populations of the South ; it has four men 
in China ; and it dispenses the Gospel to the colored people, 
slave and free, of the slaveholding States, through the agency 
of about one hundred and fifty missionaries, who do nothing- 
else but to labor for this degraded race. The missionary 
corps of this young but vigorous society, therefore, reaches 
the sum total of about three hundred and sixty persons. 

5. The missionary societies of the many smaller subdivi- 
sions of Methodism, European and American, are too nume- 
rous to admit of minute analysis in these pages. It is 
enough to say, that they all sustain the character for diffu- 
sive benevolence, not only of our common Christianity, but 
of their common Methodism. It has been difficult to find 
exact and recent returns of their missionary operations ; but 
it is entirely safe to give them the general credit of employ- 
ploying in their field, at home and abroad, at least four 
Atmdrgc? individuals ; and if any of them should be surprised 
at the comparative meagreness of this concession to their 
evangelical activity, let it be remembered by them, that, in 
making up this map of Methodism, it has been a ruling pur- 
pose to fall within its actual and well-known limits, as the 
argument to be drawn from it w T ould be marred, if not 
defeated, by extravagance or excess. 3 

3 For all these data, I have depended on the official publications of 
the several branches of Methodism, but have compared them wi*h 
other standard publications. I have discovered large omissions in the 
statistical tables published in the Methodist almanacs of this country; but 
it would be at too great a cost to make them the subject of a note. It 
may be said, in a word, that the almanac summaries do not keep up witk 
the real progress of Methodism, especially in the United States ; and in 
the almanac for 1859, there are many data given, which were historically 



54 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



Wesleyan Methodism, be it remembered, if the average 
of times be struck between the beginnings of its several 
leading organizations has had less than a century on the 
theater of action ; it has had but a hundred and twenty 
years since the day of the first Methodist ; it has labored 
under oppositions and embarrassments certainly never sur- 
passed in any age of the christian Church ; and yet, from some 
cause or causes, it has prospered and now stands before the 
world with a solid phalanx of not less than thirty-seven thou- 
sand, seven hundred and thirty ministers, two thousand 
missionaries, and an ascertained aggregate of at least two 
millions, eight hundred thousand members — the largest 
religious body, of one general theory and practice, of which 
Protestantism itself can boast. 4 

This, it cannot be denied, is a very grand array of num- 
bers, particularly when the manner of the origin of Method- 
ism, and the facts of its early history are considered ; and 
the figures are so large, that a reader can scarcely pass over 

true only several years before. The explanation is, probably, that these 
works have to be made up about a year in advance, and at a time when 
the statistics even of their own year have not been published. The reader 
of the " Methodist Almanac," therefore, like all other almanac readers, 
must not rely too closely on the statements made ; for, as it is always 
behind the truth, when he reads of a sprinkle, it may turn out to be a 
shower ! 

4 Dr. Stevens (" Christian Ad. and Journ.," 1S60) gives the round num- 
bers of Methodism as follows: Preachers, 43,209 ; members, 2,742,395 ; 
hearers, 10,000,000. He says, however, that he is plainly inside of the 
facts, as there were several of the smaller branches very defectively re- 
ported. I have taken no little pains in obtaining exact information ; and 
I come to similar results ; but it must be remembered that I speak only 
of Wesleyan Methodism, while he was numbering all the bodies going 
under the general name. From all the data I have gathered — which 
would be too elaborate and ostentatious for a note — my conclusion is, that 
the number of preachers would be more correctly stated at 50,000 ; that 
the membership cannot be less than 3,000,000, when all our missionary 
stations are included; and that the hearers do not fall below 12,000,000. 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



55 



them without deep reflection. We all read with wonder 
and delight of the great labors and successes of the first 
apostles of Christianity ; we follow them from Jerusalem 
over Palestine, and from Palestine over all the neighboring 
countries, with admiration ; we sorrow and joy with them 
alternately, as they suffer or succeed in their glorious work 
of propagating the doctrines of salvation ; we see such 
energy, such perseverance, such rapidity of movement, and 
such excitement all along their pathway, that we seem to 
think the nations must soon be converted by such holy zeal ; 
but, at the end of the first century, with the best historic 
guides in our hands, sacred and profane, we pass over the 
ground of their great labors, and gather up the statistics of 
their church, when we find that the converts from all the 
world to the religion of the Cross do not exceed the round 
sum of five hundred thousand. It would be a hopeless task, 
I think, for any man to undertake to make the number 
greater. ]\ T ow, then, by the side of these results, let usjook 
at the existing condition of Wesleyan Methodism. There 
were in Great Britain alone, at the end of the first hundred 
years after the rejection of Mr. Wesley from the pulpits of 
the Church of England, about the same number of Wesleyan 
Methodists as there were members of the universal Church 
of Christ at the beginning of the second century. Wesleyan 
Methodism in the United States, on the other hand, as an 
organized body, has seen just seventy-five years ; and yet 
the statistics of the apostolic church, taken as before at the 
opening of the second century of the christian era, are 
contained nearly four times within the dividend furnished by 
its numbers. Wesleyan Methodism, as a whole, English, 
American, and missionary, as it now appears in the world, 
could suffer the number of the first century apostolic church 
to be taken out of its statistics five times successively, and 
then leave as many as that church did itself contain with 
which to begin the triumphs of a second century ! 



56 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



If we now look at England for a moment — that same Eng- 
land whose religious teachers rejected the itinerant Wesley — 
we learn that, according to the statistics of the Registrar- 
General, only one-third of its present population are in any 
way connected with the established order. The active, 
living, pious members of that body, which admits communi- 
cants without personal experience of any conscious work of 
grace — members merely born and bred within its pale — 
must be very few indeed ; and these, with every other mem- 
ber, are divided in thought, feeling, and action, in sentiment 
and in sympathies, into several discordant parties. The 
Church of England, in fact, is now nothing but a sect with 
certain privileges granted it by law ; and these privileges 
cannot long stand. With two-thirds of the population of 
the island opposed to their continuance ; with an organized 
party, headed by some of the strongest men in England, 
seeking their abolition, they must soon give way ; and this 
is so plain upon the surface of society in that country, that 
Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Buckle, the profoundest 
English philosophers for a century, have made the common 
statement, that the English Establishment cannot survive the 
present generation. 6 

How is it, in the mean time, with the establishment 
founded by Mr. Wesley ? Wesleyanism is nothing but a 

6 In a recent speech in the Town Hall, at Birmingham, Mr. John Bright, 
the great reformer of the House of Commons, is reported to have used 
the following language :. "Probably many persons in this meeting are not 
aware of the fact, that, in England, only a third of the people have any 
connection whatever, according to the statistics of the Begistrar-General, 
with the Established Church." The substance of the whole speech was, 
that a minority could not long govern the majority, even under a govern- 
ment like that of England. The dissenting force, he thought, was already 
too powerful, and would soon become too enlightened, to submit to live 
only for the benefit of a portion of the population not amounting to more 
than half of their own number. 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



57 



moderate Episcopalianism, founded, not upon tradition, but 
upon a felt experience of regeneration ; it is Episcopalianism 
made alive ; for though in England it has not the episcopal 
form of constitution, it feels itself to be but a revival within 
and around the national organization ; and this Wesleyanism, 
now more flourishing than at any former period of its his- 
tory, and becoming every day stronger in moral influence, 
will stand entire amidst the ruins of the Church of England. 
The vital elements of that church, after the general dissolu- 
tion, will constitute a small but scattered population, with no 
patronage, or sufficient power to collect them into parishes ; 
the worldly part of the establishment will fall back into the 
world to which they properly belong ; and then will come 
the harvest-day of Wesleyan Methodism in England. Its 
living piety will attract to itself, not all at once but gradu- 
ally, the disintegrated constituents of the spiritual portion 
of the fallen denomination ; for they will see in Methodism, 
not only the practical religion which they themselves possess, 
but every kindly sympathy toward the people from whom 
Wesleyanism is but a partial and perhaps temporary separa- 
tion, with not a particle of the repulsiveness of dissent ; and 
the* perfect organization of the Wesleyan body, as complete 
as that of the old establishment itself, will be ready to gather 
in the scattered members of the church, and give them a home 
providentially fitted up for them by one, who, in the midst 
of all his persecutions and sufferings, never left them. But 
the reader may carry out these suggestions to his own satis- 
faction. These, and greater than these results, are shadowed 
forth by the present religious condition of Great Britain. 
The plan of this chapter, however, is to deal only with well- 
settled facts; and it is a fact, whatever may be promised 
or foreboded by it, that Wesleyan Methodism is at this 
moment the strongest and most prosperous body of living 
christians in Great Britain, while the British Church, 
divided and subdivided against itself, and more than ever 

3* 



53 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



distracted since it shut out the influence and labors of Mr. 
Wesley, is tottering to its dissolution. 6 

Wesleyan Methodism is still stronger, in comparison with 
the oldest of the denominations, in the United States. In the 
foregoing tabular view no account has been taken of several 
of the minor associations, which, though nominally separated 
from the parent body by some secular peculiarity, are one 
with it in tracing their existence, and institutions, and spirit 
to Mr. Wesley. The most recent historian of Methodism has 
given to the American branch of it a membership of about 
two millions ; and this, by the usual rule of reckoning three 
hearers to a member, would set off to it about one-third of 
the entire population of this country. In other words, Metho- 
dism has about the same proportion of our inhabitants as the 
English Church has of the inhabitants of England, and about 
twice as many, in comparison, as that Church has of the entire 
population of Great Britain. If numbers, therefore, as in the 
mother country, or plurality, as was once the rule in our own, 
could make a state establishment, then Methodism would be, 
at this hour, the national religion of the United States. If 
compared with Episcopalianism and Congregationalism, the 
two oldest and the two original Protestant religions of Ame- 

6 There is nothing fanciful in this description of the precarious condi- 
tion of the Church of England. The leading journals of Great Britain 
have been teeming, for some years back, with worse anticipations than I 
have ventured here to copy. It is well known that two years ago (185*7), 
there was a bill in parliament for the abolition of the whole tything sys- 
tem ; every man was to be left free to pay or not to pay for any sort of 
preaching ; and by the passage of this bill, the Church of England would 
have no better foundation than any other sect. What is more, the bill 
actually passed the House of Commons ; it was defeated in the House of 
Lords ; the committee of the Protestant Dissenting Deputies, however, 
have reintroduced the subject ; and they are resolved to press it, in every 
form and by every means, till success shall crown their effort. The facts 
of the case have been largely stated in the newspapers of England and 
of the United States, and need no further reference for their authentica- 
tion. 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



rica, it would rise to a still higher right to precedence. "WTien 
Methodism appeared in the southern colonies of the present 
confederacy, under the ausjuces of a few iinknown mission- 
aries sent out by Mr. Wesley, Episcopalianism was the pre- 
vailing religion there ; and in some of the colonies it was the 
established order as in England. Xow, there are in all the 
United States, according to the last federal census, eighty- 
nine thousand three hundred and 1 fifty-nine of this denomi- 
nation against the tico millions of Wesleyan Methodists. 
This is no more than saying, that the entire body of the Pro- 
testant Episcopal Church of the United States, bishops, priests 
and communicants, might be taken twenty-two times from the 
membership of American Methodism, and yet leave a re- 
mainder almost as large as the entire membership of the 
Unitarian denomination of this country. According to the 
same census, also, there was in the Orthodox Congregational 
societies, once the established order in Xew England, in all 
the States and Territories, a membership of one hundred and 
seventy-seven thousand, six hundred and sixty-eight, a num- 
ber that might be taken ten times out of the membership of 
American Methodism, and still leave nearly three times as 
many as compose the Protestant Episcopal Church of the 
United States. Such comparisons, however, carry but 
little meaning with them. To make any appreciable com- 
parison between Methodism in America and these old and 
once legally established churches, it would be necessary, 
in fact, to resort to other modes of calculation ; for the 
truth is, as the figures show, that, omitting entirely the body 
of the statistics of Wesleyan Methodism in the United States, 
the addition made to it in this country during the last year 
is greater by several thousand than the latest officially ac- 
knowledged membership of either of these ancestral and still 
respectable denominations. The increase of these two bodies, 
on the other hand, is certainly rather doubtful. According 
to the most unexceptional authority, Orthodox Congrega- 



60 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



tionalism has been for some years declining in this country. 
In an annual statement, made in the year 1858, that denomi- 
nation makes the following declaration : " In New England, 
our only stronghold, we cannot expect to be much stronger 
than we are now. The life and enterprise of many of our 
churches are going out from us." 7 In another place of the 
same annual it is stated : " The membership in New England 
is less by the returns this year than last, and last than the 
year before." 8 This is certainly an unwelcome state of things 
for a religious body once the only church, and that estab- 
lished and defended by civil and penal statutes, in one of the 
most enlightened asid important portions of our land ; but 

7 Congregational Year Book for 1858, p. 14. 

8 Congregational Year Book for 1858, p. 87. The writer of this general 
statement would infer, however, that the actual number of Congregational- 
ists, notwithstanding these diminishing returns, is greater than at any 
time before; but he is only conjecturing in making this announcement; 
for the reports of the churches do not show it ; and then the groundwork 
of his hypothesis conveys the disheartening idea, that all the statistics of 
his denomination have long been entirely beyond the facts : " The dis- 
crepancy," he says (Congregational Year Book for 1858, p. 88), is easily 
accounted for, when it is known that for the last two years, especially the 
last, there have been more thorough revisions of Church records than 
perhaps ever before, and the dropping of the names of members long 
since removed and lost sight of" The writer then gives some examples 
of this work of revision and reduction : " One church," he says, "reported 
a membership, in 1856, of about four hundred and fifty, and received more 
than were removed during the ensuing year, but in 1857 reported only 
eighty ! Others were cut down by tens, others, by twenties, or fifties. 
And this is a work long since needed. It is time our church records were 
thoroughly revised, and our real living membership ascertained, no matter 
how low the figure, if it be truthful." The truth, however, if these are 
characteristic facts, would certainly be alarming to Congregationalism in 
this country ; for if the above be the ratio of the reported excess over the 
actual statistics of the denomination, the facts would give them only from 
fifty to a hundred thousand members on the continent. It has long been 
my opinion that Congregationalism is gradually wasting away among us ; 
but I had not supposed its condition and prospects so perfectly dis- 
couraging ! 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



61 



the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States is en- 
joying only a moderate success ; and the time cannot be dis- 
tant when both these denominations may sink in self-conscious- 
ness to the level of a low, but not abject position. They have 
age, and reputation, and talents, and learning, and piety, and 
some zeal to preserve them against a dissolution like that im- 
pending over the Church of England. Without any doubt, 
however, they have about reached their limits ; they have 
never been able to make their systems popular in this country ; 
and the consequence is, that Methodism, which is the people's 
religion in a land where the people govern, is destined to 
surpass them both, in the time to come, far beyond all former 
precedent. He who doubts this declaration, with the census 
tables of the nation and the minutes of the three Churches in 
his hands, would doubt the propositions of mathematics. 9 

It is not only true, however, that success is no argument 
for truth, but it is equally true, that numbers are not always 
the measure of moral power. The three hundred Hebrews, 
who followed the call of Gideon, laid the myriads of the 
enemy at their feet. Saul, with all his armies, retired before 
a host, which fell back before the single hand of David. 
Methodism may have her millions, but some of the smallest 
of the religious bodies, like that of the Episcopalians or Con- 
gregationalists, for example, may control the country and the 
age, notwithstanding the paucity of their numbers. It is 
notorious, as has been seen, that Methodism began its career 

9 It must not be overlooked that I have taken the statistics of Congre- 
gationalism from the census of 1850 ; but if the authority above quoted 
(Congregational Year Book for 1858) is to be relied on, the returns of 
that year might be greater than the facts of the present ; for it is since 
1850 that the decrease in the denomination has been particularly noticed ; 
and yet I have followed the latest returns of Methodism in the United 
States, for the obvious reason, that instead of being a retrograding or even 
stationary movement, its progress is accelerating, the last year being of all 
the most triumphant. 



62 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



among the poorer classes ; and, as wealth is always power, it 
may be that either of the above inconsiderable denominations 
may possess more of this material force, than this countless 
multitude of improvident and needy Methodists. Such a 
thing, it is clear, is not only possible, but considering all the 
known facts of the case, would seem even probable. What- 
ever may be the premises, however, history does not sustain 
the conclusion. The very fact that Methodism began among 
the working classes has turned out to be greatly to the ad- 
vantage of its pecuniary prosperity. Labor, the labor of these 
working Methodists, was found to be not only very useful in 
preserving them from idle speculations, and in maintaining 
the healthfulness of their moral feelings, and so making thenr 
a more stable and pious people, for the very reason of their 
industrious habits, but it has as effectually contributed to the 
production of wealth among them. Had Methodism been 
suffered to go forward with its work among the upper classes 
in Greaft Britain, and in the United States, with no opposition 
from Episcopalian or Congregational establishments, it might 
have drawn many of the high and great into its embrace, but 
it would have received their prejudices and loose habits with 
them ; and at this hour, when those who were then wealthy 
and noble are now, in their descendants, very largely poor 
and degraded, it might have gone down with them to their 
present level. The same argument would have force, with 
some modification for the better, had Methodism taken its 
position solely or mainly among the gentry. But neither of 
these arrangements was within the order of divine Providence. 
God sent Methodism, as he had before sent Christianity in 
its origin, to the industrious multitude, who, by its influence 
upon them, have become the active and productive classes of 
the present generation. Their religion made them sober, 
provident, and frugal, as their necessities had made them not 
afraid of labor. It is a remark of Dr. Channing, that he had 
" great faith in hard work ;" and so had Methodism at the 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



63 



beginning of her history. This hard work of her working 
masses, coupled with the other virtues derived from their 
methodistic training, has now made them the most successful 
business people of this country. It may not be generally 
understood ; but Methodism is at this time, not only very 
numerous, but very wealthy, in almost every quarter of the 
world. Their wealth is more evenly distributed among them, 
than is the case with some denominations, and may thus 
make a slighter impression upon a person indulging a passing 
observation on them. This, however, is as it should be ; and 
it arises from the fact that the members, being characteris- 
tically practical and hard-working men, have not depended 
upon speculation, but upon their personal exertions. They 
are now, without any doubt, the most wealthy denomination 
in this country. Their Church property has been officially 
reported to be worth more than that of any other religious 
body in the United States. They are at work, hard at work, 
with their native industry and energy, in agriculture, in com- 
merce, in manufactures, in ship-building, in every department 
of human labor. On the sea and on the land ; on the surface 
of the earth and within its rich interior ; everywhere, and in 
everything that promises good returns — in gold fields, in 
silver mines, in the deep gorges where they cut lead out of 
the hill-sides, among the copper mountains — they are plying 
the implements of their hundred-handed industry. Metho- 
dism, in a word, humble as it was at first, is the long-fabled 
but now real and powerful working Briareus of the present 
generation ; it has a hand on every operation of our country 
and our age ; and it is felt, and will be felt, as a money-using 
and money-gathering force, from the centre to the circum- 
ference of every proper and profitable undertaking. It is not 
only in the manifold and inferior operations of labor, that the 
Methodists are at work, but equally in the heaviest and most 
magnificent enterprises of material industry. It is a singular 
fact, indeed, as if the spirit of Methodism prompted to designs 



64 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



in proportion to its own dimensions, that some of the largest 
mechanical achievements of the day have been planned and 
executed by its members. The largest ship ever built on this 
side of the Atlantic was designed and constructed by a 
Methodist. The largest publishing establishment in the 
United States, perhaps, excepting the one owned directly by 
the denomination, is the property of other Methodists. In 
every department of handicraft, in fact, in all the joint labors 
of the muscles and the mind, Methodism stands higher, as it 
would seem, than any other order of religious people in this 
nation. From every quarter, wealth is flowing steadily into 
the coffers of her membership ; and, therefore, whatever its 
circumstances may have been at the instauration of this 
religious movement, it now has the double advantage, if 
rightly improved, of a large population, and of great wealth. 

Numbers and wealth, however, do not complete the cata- 
logue of constituent elements, that go in to the formation of 
a large social influence. Numbers are useful in many ways, 
and we are told by the prince of dramatists that, 

" Where gold goes before, all ways lie open ;" 

but the same old bard of nature tells us also 

" That the ass bears gold, 
To groan and sweat under the business, 
Either led or driven as we may point the way." 

It might be true, therefore, that Methodism, with all her 
affluence, is only the burden-bearer, without intelligence to 
give proper direction to its course. Indeed, it may as well 
be said at once, that such has been the judgment passed upon 
it by some, who have acknowledged the greatness of its 
dimensions and its general wealth. The cry of illiteracy be- 
gan in England, in the very days of Mr. Wesley, not because 
the individuals who founded and supported the system there 
were not highly educated men; for they were always con- 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



65 



fessed to be learned and informed to the very first degree ; 
but because they were driven out of the settled parishes of 
the kingdom and compelled to make their ministrations to the 
common people. From England, the imputation passed over 
with the Methodists to this continent ; and here they found 
a state of things well adapted to fix still deeper this reproach 
upon them. They were, in general, as I have before confessed 
— for there is nothing gained by a denial or concealment of 
the truth — of the every day working portion of the popula- 
tion; their religious teachers, with many signal exceptions, 
though deeply-experienced in religion, were either quite illi- 
terate or moderately educated persons ; and they were then 
placed in immediate comparison and competition with the 
established denominations of the country, who had long shared 
the advantages of our republican system of education, and 
whose ministers were always well disciplined in intellectual 
culture, and oftentimes really eminent for their attainments. 
It was a sort of common law, in fact, with these old denomi- 
nations, that no man was fit to be a preacher, unless he had 
passed through a college ; and it was also maintained very 
widely, both among Episcopalians and Congregationalists, that 
if a person had passed through the studies of a college, he 
was a suitable candidate for the pulpit, without personal 
piety, and, what was worse, without moral character. 10 

10 This is a charge so severe that I feel bound to sustain it by testimony, 
not only unimpeachable, but disinterested ; and the reader is therefore 
directed to the history of the settlement of the Rev. Obadiah Parsons, in 
1784, in the town of Lynn, Massachusetts, when it was well known that he 
had just escaped from a sham examination at Gloucester for licentiousness. 
The story is partly-told, with a good deal of mercy, by Rev. Parsons Cooke,. 
D.D. (Cooke's Centuries, pp. 208-217), in a work written mainly for the 
purpose, as it would seem, to rebuke Methodism ! This case of Mr. Par- 
sons, however, is only a siDgle specimen of the universal looseness of the 
public mind in the United States under the administration of Episcopalian 
and Congregational orthodoxy, as will be seen by a general consultation 



.66 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



Methodism, on the other hand, started with the idea, as 
has been seen, that the minister was called to go into the 
world and preach a felt Gospel to mankind. Like David, he 
was to be able to call the people together, and then tell them 
" what the Lord had done for his soul." This was considered 
by the Wesleyans, on both sides of the Atlantic, as the first, 
great, indispensable qualification of a minister. They so ex- 
plained themselves everywhere. In England, they put this 
experimental work of grace before ordination ; and their op- 
ponents distorted their position into a denial of ordination. 
In New England they set this inward experience of regenera- 
tion above education ; and this was at once distorted into a 
position against education. The preeminence thus given to 
a heartfelt religion, taken in connection with the fact, that 
the Methodists were generally, at that time, of the humbler 
and less educated classes in society, was color enough to give 
their opponents the chance of accusing them of being enemies 
to intellectual culture. The accusation, however, was entirely 
unjust. Methodism was flatly misrepresented upon that 
subject. Its ministers often said, I will admit, that they 
would rather have religion without education, than education 
without religion • and, in the heat of the engagement be- 
tween the two parties to it, Congregationalism was un- 
doubtedly charged with taking one of these positions, while 
Methodism was as strenuously charged with holding to the 
other. Neither of these imputations, however, was historically 
just. Congregationalism, with all its laxness of discipline at 
the time of the advent of Methodism, never taught that per- 
sonal piety was of no value to a minister ; and Methodism 
never held that intellectual cultivation was not important. 
Methodism, in fact, took its origin in the most learned of the 
English universities ; its founder, and its first clerical adhe- 

of the early annals of this country, and as Dr. Cooke seems rather reluc- 
tantly to admit in several places of the volume above quoted. 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



67 



rents, were all graduates of that ancient seat of learning ; and 
one of the first things undertaken by them, after they had 
gathered a population together by their preaching, was to 
erect a literary institution for their improvement. The same 
course was pursued by our first and leading AYesleyan mis- 
sionaries in the United States. They had scarcely travelled 
over the whole coimtry, before they had founded and raised 
a college which they intended to make of the very highest 
order. It was soon burnt to the ground, but rebuilt at once 
by the indefatigable and persistent zeal of its projectors. It 
was again reduced to ashes ; and it was doubtful whether 
this ill fortune was the work of an incendiary or the special 
will of Providence ; but, trusting again in the goodness of 
God, though with some discouragement of feeling, and in 
another locality, they and their successors went forward to 
project and rear another literary institution of the same high 
character. This time the effort was entirely successful ; and, 
from that beginning, the denomination has proceeded till it 
nowha> educational institutions of every grade quite sufficient 
for the best culture of its entire population. 

TTesleyan Methodism has now, in the mother coimtry, 
besides its five hundred smaller schools, a Xorrnal Training 
Institution at Westminster, for the preparation of teachers 
for its extensive educational operations ; it has another of a 
similar character in Ireland ; and it has in England two 
Theological Institutions, one at Didsbury, the other at Rich- 
mond, with very learned and able faculites, for the most 
thorough education of its ministers. 11 

11 Kingswood School, the first of Mr. Wesley's literary institutions, was 
established in 1748 ; and it is devoted exclusively to the education of the 
son3 of Wesleyan ministers. A similar school was founded, in 1811, at 
Woodhouse Grove, near Leeds. There is also a classical school at Sheffield, 
which, though not owned by the TVesleyan body, is a "Weslevan school, and 
secured to the interests of Methodism by its deed of settlement. Besides 
these and other institutions of the higher grade, there are numerous We§- 



68 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



In the United States, Methodism has a great abundance of 
schools of every degree of elevation, from the select* school to 
the university, and generally overflowing with the children 
of its own population. The select schools and smaller acade- 
mies are so numerous as to be beyond an exact calculation. 
They are literally everywhere, throughout the nation, in every 
State, in every Territory, manned by Methodist teachers, 
and filled with Methodist pupils. Of seminaries of a higher 
grade, employing from five to twenty-five professors, and 
having an annual average of students ranging from two. hun- 
dred and fifty to a thousand, it now has, according to a count 
made from my own knowledge, a list of at least one hundred 
and twenty-one ; and, from the geographical distribution of 
those counted, it is very plain, that the actual number is even 
greater than I have herein stated. As such statements will 
look to many like exaggerations, and for no other reason, I 
will add, that one of the above hundred and more seminaries 
at one time had, to my own knowledge, a corps of twenty-five 
professors, nearly every one of them liberally educated per- 
sons, and an annual catalogue of eleven hundred and fifty-six 
students. This was then, I believe, the largest and most 
flourishing institution of the kind in the United States ; and, 
therefore, I need hardly add, that it was also the largest 
among the Methodists ; but it was by no means so large as to 
stand above all comparison, for there were at that time, as 
there are now, about eighty similar institutions, whose plans 
of study were as liberal, whose faculties were as able, and 
whose patronage was almost as ample, as the one which has 
been mentioned as only primus inter pares. But then, still 
above these first-class and exceedingly popular institutions, 

leyan day schools all over the kingdom, which are owned, conducted, 
supported and patronized by the Methodists of Great Britain. These 
smaller but widely scattered schools, as Dr. Porter well remarks (Compen- 
dium of Methodism, p. 103), " have contributed very largely to the general 
intelligence of the people." 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



69 



American"Methodism is reaping the educational results of at 
least twenty-five literary institutions of the highest grade of 
all, some of which are colleges of age and standing, and 
among which are no less than eighteen with university char- 
ters and appendages. It is one thing to have a college charter, 
or a university charter, and quite another to have a college, 
or a university ; but it may be said with truth, that American 
Methodism has laid down for all its collegiate institutions as 
deep and broad a course of study as can be found in any of 
the colleges of this country, or of Europe ; and her univer- 
sities have opened with the high ambition of equalling, if not 
surpassing, the most noted of- their predecessors. Every 
educated man knows how idle it is for a literary institution 
of any grade to base a preeminence on the antiquity of its 
foundation, or on the extent of its notoriety ; for it is well 
known, that the course of study in those of no celebrity is 
virtually identical with those of the greatest reputation ; and 
a severe student is always able to get about an equal amount 
of help, and of education, whatever be the college or univer- 
sity in which he may chance to study. Dartmouth, a second- 
class institution, for example, has sent out not only a greater 
man, but a larger proportion of great men, and men of 
thorough training, than Harvard, with all its world-wide 
fame. There is a great deal of loose and shallow prejudice 
upon this subject. The German schools look down upon 
those of England; the English sneer at the inferiority of the 
American ; the older ones in America affect to ignore their 
juniors ; while every sensible man, the world over, who has 
passed through a thorough discipline, knows, that there is 
scarcely anything to choose between the actual course of 
study in them. 12 

12 Bristed (Five Years in an >English University, passim,) wrote his 
two volumes for the avowed purpose of proving the inferiority of the 
colleges of the United States to those of England; but it is singular that 
the whole course of his revelations of English student-life, establishes be- 



70 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



The age we live in has adopted what is substantially one 
common plan and platform of the higher education. Germany, 
England, and America have alike adopted it. Methodism 
has also adopted it. She has set it at work in all her colleges ; 
and, under its direction, she has made as thorough scholars, 
and that in some of her least known institutions, as can be 
furnished from the oldest and most noted of the land. She 
is making no needless noise upon the subject, outside of her 
own limits in particular, but she is silently and steadily per- 
forming a work, in the education of her youth, which is 
making a rapid and perfect revolution in her literary position 
before the world. Her first work, from the nature of things, 
was to gather a people ; for she certainly could not educate 
them before she had them; but, no sooner did she begin to 
count upon a population as really her own, than she com- 
menced to put forth an energy, in the way of their educa- 
tional elevation, which, as it seems to me, must appear to 
every candid observer as little less than wonderful. 

And yet, it is not for the body of her people, only, that 
Methodism has been making these ample provisions in this 
country; for, were this the case, her membership would 
soon rise above and so spurn her religious teachers ; but she 
is doing herself nearly equal honor in rearing institutions for 
the education of her clergy. It is well understood, in the 
first place, that every person entering the ranks of the travel- 

yond dispute the negative of his proposition, and the Foundation Scholar 
of Trinity College, Cambridge, has only been laughed at for his remunera- 
tion. The truth simply is, that young Bristed was the heir to an exhaust- 
less inheritance ; that he had too much money for the good of his mind 
while a student in this country; that his American education, consequently, 
gave so little satisfaction to his friends, that he had to go to Europe to 
make up a reasonable preparation for public life ; and so, he went to 
England, spent five years at Cambridge in the filial duty of wasting more 
money, and then wrote a book, abusing the institutions of his native land, 
to show himself, not only a gentleman, but a scholar ! 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



71 



ing ministry of Methodism in America has to pass through 
a four-years' course of religious and literary training while 
actually engaged in preaching ; and this rule, which knows 
no exceptions, is enforced as rigidly upon graduates of col- 
lege, as upon persons of merely common school or academical 
education. Beyond this universal scheme of ministerial pre- 
paration, there are seven or eight universities among the 
American Methodists, which have Theological Departments 
connected with them ; and then, above these also, they have 
a Biblical Institute of deserved eminence and success, at the 
capital of New Hampshire, and another of the same character, 
whose property is now worth not far from half a million of 
dollars, in the State of Illinois, near Chicago. There is a 
project on foot, at this time, to establish a third somewhere 
beyond the Rocky Mountains. The Biblical seminaries 
already instituted have faculties of real ability, and of pro- 
found and varied scholarship; they are inviting hundreds of 
young men, from every walk of life, to make a more ample 
preparation for the labors and responsibilities of the Christian 
pulpit ; and these hundreds are pouring out, in an ever- 
widening current, to swell the ranks and elevate the cha- 
racter and reputation of the ministry of their denomination. 

There never was a time, however, as their success will 
show, when the heralds of Methodism did not possess the 
gifts, graces, and acquisitions necessary to a most efficient 
discharge of their ministerial duties ; they have always been 
abte to meet the representatives of the most thoroughly edu- 
cated denominations, in any sort of theological engagement, 
and to retire from the field, certainly with advantage, if not 
with triumph ; they have pushed their way along, in spite of 
all the clamor in relation to their want of learning, routing 
from the arena those who have made the charge, or out- 
stripping them immeasurably hi the race of victory ; they have 
given a glorious demonstration to the world, that a vital and 
heart-felt experience of the work of regeneration, with a, 



72 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



reasonable ability of speech, is far better than mere intel- 
lectual culture ; but they are now adding to this original 
advantage, from which they do not swerve, that for which 
their opponents in this country and in Europe made their 
chief claim of ministerial superiority ; and the result is, that, 
under the influence of both these advantages united, the 
ministry of Methodism, on both sides of the Atlantic, will 
soon be the most thoroughly cultivated, as they have always 
been the most successful, ministry of modern times. 

The two other liberal professions, however, have not been 
neglected. In England, Methodism has no institutions, or 
department, for the education of lawyers and physicians ; the 
laws of the country place obstacles in the path of non-epis- 
copal foundations of this character ; but, in the United States, 
the denomination has several of these appendages to its uni- 
versities. They are to be found chiefly in the southern and 
western States, where Methodism began with the settlement 
of the country, and where its wealth and general standing 
are consequently much superior to what they are in the older 
portions of the Union. Such schools, however, with all the 
wealth and influence of the denomination thrown around 
them, can not outrun the natural conditions of their growth. 
They must have time for their development and for the lay- 
ing down of a basis for a wide and permanent reputation. 
The medical schools of Methodism have done better, as a 
general thing, than her law schools. Some of them, indeed, 
like that at Cincinnati, which is a branch of the Wesle^m 
University of Ohio, and like the one at Indianapolis, which is 
a branch of the Indiana Asbury University, have already 
taken a marked position among the medical institutions ot 
the country. Enough has been done, in fact, in both law 
and medicine, to make a demonstration of the power of a 
denomination, in these departments of education, which, above 
all other religious bodies, with the single exception of the 
Catholics, can concentrate any measure of its force to any 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



73 



point selected by it for a special undertaking ; and American 
Methodism has now more schools of this kind, though as yet 
young and little known, but healthy and vigorous in their 
early promise, and destined to rise to a high place of honor 
and renown, than either of the oldest and ablest denomina- 
tions of the country. 

To show still further, however, that Methodism the world 
over, and particularly in the United States, is not the un- 
conscious burden-bearer of its uncounted gold, but is an 
intellectual and far-seeing force, it may be added at this 
point, that, in Europe and in America, it has establishments 
for the publication of newspapers, monthly and quarterly 
periodicals, and for the manufacture of books, which, even 
among the largest houses, must be looked upon as the leaders 
of their class. There is one in London, founded at an early 
time, which may be said to have set a pattern to Great 
Britain, and to all Europe, in the great work of making 
religious reading cheap for the general benefit of mankind. 
There has been much said of late upon this interesting theme ; 
it has been often presented, in the great quarterlies of both 
hemispheres, as an object to be attained, if not a question to 
be solved ; but it is a historical fact, that English Methodism 
attained the object, and solved the question, years before it 
began to be discussed by any other portion of the world ; 
and the consequence is, that the world has now only just 
roused up to a social duty, in which Methodism has led the 
way, and in the performance of which she yet wears the 
palm. The idea and the enterprise are English ; and the 
honors of invention should be willingly given where they so 
properly belong ; but the greatest development and widest 
application of the theory of cheap publications for popular 
circulation have been realized among the Methodists of the 
United States. It is not possible here to give the statistics 
of their publishing establishments. It is enough to say, in 
this place, that they have one of these institutions at New 
4 



74 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



York, another at Cincinnati, a third at Nashville, with 
branches at Boston, Auburn, Pittsburg, Chicago, Richmond, 
St. Louis, Charleston, San Francisco, Raleigh, New Orleans, 
Memphis, Galveston, and Salem, in the new State of Oregon, 
besides depositories and other public provisions for the sale 
of books in almost every leading city of the. United States. 
Every traveling minister, also, is an official and accredited 
agent of these establishments ; he is expected to keep an 
assortment of their publications at his residence, or near him, 
and under his control, for the convenience of his people and 
of the general public ; and the consequent sale and distribu- 
tion of their works reach an annual list, which, to those of my 
readers who have taken no pains to learn the intellectual 
activity of this denomination, will seem to be incredible. 
The whole sum may be imagined from the fact, which has 
been stated by the publishers themselves, that the sales at 
the New York house alone, from the size of a tract to a 
volume costing fifteen dollars, averages the daily amount of 
about twenty thousand distinct publications. The entire 
periodical force of Methodism in the United States presents 
an aggregate of two quarterlies, two monthlies, and twenty 
weekly sheets, of which two are in the German language. 
Methodism in England, according to its population, is almost 
equally active in these intellectual operations. It must be 
regarded as quite notable, indeed, that that very people 
which was only a little time ago reproached for its illiteracy, 
now presents the anomaly of owning and carrying on, not 
only the largest denominational publishing house in the world, 
but a greater number of them than any other denomination. 
It publishes also the most widely circulating religious quar- 
terly in the world. Its leading weekly newspaper, the 
Christian Advocate and Journal, is, for the same reason, 
the banner religious weekly of the world, there* being no 
other having its extent of circulation ; and the combined 
circulation of its American and European periodicals has 



NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF METHODISM. 



75 



nothing like a parallel, among purely religious periodicals, in 
the annals of mankind. At this moment, so far from its 
being regarded by outside observers as an illiterate class of 
people, Methodism now stands in the front rank of religious 
bodies for its literary operations, and is even looked to as an 
example for the oldest and most cultivated denomination : 
"No other religious body in this country," says a recent 
issue of the New York Evangelist, " can present, we be- 
lieve, so various and extensive a collection of denominational 
literature as the Methodist Church. We bid them God- 
speed in the work in which they are engaged, and would only 
express the hope, that kindred ^churches of our Protestant 
faith may be incited by their example." The New York 
Observer, also, another disinterested witness, is satisfied 
that the progress of Methodism, " in the intellectual improve- 
ment of the people, is one of the signs of the times." 

The truth is, in fact, that Methodism itself is one of the 
signs of the times. When it is considered that it began 
under a cloud ; that it was turned out of doors, from the day 
of its birth, by all the world ; that, the moment it began to 
grow and make itself felt in society, it was persecuted by the 
established orders on both sides of the Atlantic ; and that it 
now stands, in spite of all these discouragements, first in 
numbers, first in labors, first in wealth, first in the ratio of 
its progress, and first in the magnitude and success, of its 
educational and literary establishments, it must strike the 
most superficial and the most profound observer as something 
worthy of careful study on the part of every person, who 
would comprehend the facts of existing history, or look for- 
ward with any foresight to the unwritten histories of the 
ages yet to come. 



CHAPTER III. 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 

In England, where Methodism was so promptly misap- 
prehended and rejected, it soon began to recover its position, 
and now stands first, in the respect shown it by high and low, 
among the non-episcopal denominations of that country. Its 
founder, and the most eloquent and able of his helpers, were 
not only turned out of all the pulpits of Great Britain, but 
looked upon with suspicion, and often mobbed by the com- 
mon people. There was a time, indeed, when it was at the 
risk of their lives, in every part of England, that the heralds 
of the new cause proceeded to their appointments ; wherever 
they approached a town, the event was hailed by a general 
commotion of the populace ; and they were commonly met 
upon the road, and escorted through the streets, by a rabble 
of men and boys amounting oftentimes to hundreds. If they 
attempted to preach, they were arrested for a misdemeanor ; 
they were dragged before some magistrate, whose judgment 
had been made out beforehand ; old laws, which had lain dead 
within the statute-books for generations, were raked up and 
galvanized into full life and vigor ; the priest of the parish 
sometimes openly, and almost always privately, joined in the 
hue and cry against them ; every epithet of reproach and of 
contempt, enthusiast, mad-cap, Jacobite, and Jesuit, was 
thrown into circulation and hurled upon them ; and every- 
thing was done, which could be devised by the higher or 
executed by the lower orders, to stop the progress of this 
novel fanaticism, and to stamp the memory of it with ever- 
lasting infamy. The work, however, went forward. It pro- 
re 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



77 



ceeded the faster, it is probable, for the very reason of this 
universal hubbub. It received notoriety without an effort 
of its own ; and this, as usual, was the first step to fame. 
Methodism passed through the fiery ordeal prepared for it 
by other hands and came out with a reputation all the better 
for the trials it had undergone. It proved itself to be a 
rational and sober movement, founded on the plainest decla- 
rations of the Bible, and worthy of encouragement from 
every person having a regard to the substance, rather than 
to the shadow, of our religion. Opposition remained ; ridi- 
cule, and misrepresentation, and reproach remained ; but the 
law, the rabble, and the tumult were gradually laid aside ; 
and it was not long before it had nothing worse to meet, than 
an occasional book, or pamphlet, or review article, or news- 
paper column, or virulent philippic from some irritated clergy- 
man of the national Church, while its march was still forever 
onward. 

The next thing, it*began to be said, that Wesley was cer- 
tainly a remarkable man ; his followers began to be regarded 
as truly pious people ; the claims of the Wesleyan ministry 
to an honorable position for scholarship, in addition to the 
universal reputation for pulpit eloquence, began to be ad- 
mitted ; and it was soon found, indeed, that both ministers 
and people were only a collection of societies, drawn together 
for the practice and propagation of real piety. Their object 
was pronounced respectable. They were themselves, how- 
ever, not admitted to good fellowship without a further 
probation. Time passed on ; the societies increased and 
multiplied ; they made early and strenuous efforts at the 
work of self-elevation ; and it was next discovered, at a time 
when the British Government had a service to be performed 
requiring talents and acquirements found only in occasional 
instances in any country, that the most learned man of his 
generation, the man they must have for the execution of 
their purpose, was a Methodist. 



78 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



The current of things still moved forward ; the Wesleyan 
preachers kept on studying their books, proclaiming their 
gospel, and educating and lifting up their people ; and then 
it was gradually found out, that Methodism was not a dis- 
senting denomination, but friendly to the Christian religion 
whether within or outside the pale of the Church of England. 
But the cause did not stop to celebrate this period of its 
progress ; it only went directly onward with its work ; it 
labored with growing numbers and multiplying instrumen- 
talities ; every year added to its dimensions and its capabili- 
ties ; every day gave it some new advantage ; and it was 
finally believed, on the part of the leading minds of the king- 
dom, both in Church and State, that it was due to Metho- 
dism to respect it for what it had accomplished among the 
people, and to look to it as the ally of the government in all 
efforts for the education and improvement of the general 
populace of Great Britain. The end was, Methodism was 
acknowledged, recognized and respected by the very classes 
by whom it had been originally rejected ; men of the highest 
credit began to be seen on the Wesleyan platforms, either as 
presiding officers, or as speakers ; lords and ladies mingled 
with the naasses of its population to listen to some favorite 
preacher ; and now, at the time of this writing, there is no 
body of people in the three realms which has a higher 
religious rank, or greater religious poicer, than that which 
professes to be the work of the once rejected Wesley. 

If the half a million of Methodists stood alone in England, 
with all the rest of the population one against them, they 
might be able to stand, under the present constitution and 
statutes of the empire, in their religious character, in spite of 
this opposition ; for their reputation for true piety and for 
active benevolence would save them the respect even of their 
enemies ; and then they would be able to hold their position 
with a still firmer foot in consequence of their literary 
achievements. 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



79 



English Methodism has been singularly literary from its 
very origin. The father of John Wesley was a man of very 
profound learning ; and he was one of the three projectors 
and proprietors of the first literary periodical in the English 
language. The Athenian Mercury, established in 1691, 
owned and edited by Samuel Wesley, Richard Sault, and 
John Dunton, preceded the Spectator by nearly twenty 
years, and received contributions, not only from the three 
proprietors, but from the first English writers of its day, 
including such men as Tate, Richardson, Pope and Swift. 
Pope was a particular friend to Mr. Samuel Wesley; and 
there is a letter still extant, in wdiich he commends him to 
Swift as a gentleman of undoubted merit : " I call him, what 
he is, a learned man," says Pope ; and the poet informs his 
correspondent that Bolingbroke was also Mr. Wesley's friend. 
It was Mr. Wesley's literary character, rather than his 
clerical and religious, which commended him to the notice 
of these classic men ; and it cannot be denied, that, whatever 
may be now thought of his productions, which are scarcely 
known on this side of the Atlantic, they are certainly nume- 
rous enough to make a reputation for literary industry 
worthy of regard. Some of his w T orks, too, such as his 
Commentary on the Book of Job, and his Dissertation 
on the Vowel Points of the Hebrew Language, are yet 
noted for their learning ; while his Hymn to the Creator, 
written in the name of Eupolis, one of the greatest of the 
Greek comic poets, is so entirely in the spirit and power of 
the old Attic muse, as to have passed for a genuine transla- 
tion, even with the learned men of England, for many years ; 
and it is so replete with poetic genius, that it received an 
unusual degree of eulogy from the English critics. " The 
character of the Platonist," says Clarke, a competent judge, 
" is wonderfully preserved throughout the whole ; the con- 
ceptions are all worthy of the subject ; the Grecian history 
and mythology are woven through it with exquisite art ; and 



so 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



it is so like a finished work from the highest cultivated Greek 
muse, that I receive the evidence of my reason and research 
with regret, when it assures me that this inimitable hymn 
was the production of the Isle-poet of Axholm." Though 
this panegyric must be regarded as altogether too unmea- 
sured, the idea of the poem is undoubtedly very fine ; but 
the versification is not on a level with the theme. It must 
be admitted, however, that the father of the founder of 
Methodism was a person of a high literary position, and of 
no little talent, among the classic writers of his age. 1 

That the mother of John "Wesley was a woman of extra- 
ordinary intellect, of wide and accurate cultivation, and of a 
highly literary turn of mind, is evident from every fact that is 
known about her. The daughter of Samuel Annesley, LL.D., 
an English clergyman of great learning, she was so proficient 
in every department of knowledge, and possessed so powerful 
a genius, that, before she was thirteen years of age, she 
examined the entire controversy between the Nonconform- 
ists and the regulars of the Church of England. The result 
of the investigation was that she forsook the principles of her 
father, without opposition from him, however, and went over 
to the established order. ~No sooner had she married Samuel 
Wesley, and begun to have a family around her, than she 
displayed a depth of philosophy, in the matter of domestic 
education, which has anticipated the supposed discoveries of 
the present generation of educators. Her knowledge of 
literature and science was not only respectable but extensive. 

J It is a remarkable circumstance in the history of this poem, that even 
after Dr. Adam Clarke had proved by his own researches, and by the em- 
phatic declaration of Professor Porson, the first Greek scholar of his age, 
that no such work as a Hymn to the Creator is to be found among the 
remaining fragments of Eupolis, the learned public were still unwilling 
to believe that a production so entirely classic could be the work of an 
English clergyman, who had sought to conceal his own merit under the 
guise of a translator. The poem may be seen in the Wesley Family, by 
Dr. Clarke, pp. 626-636. 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 81 

She was the author of a sort of compendium of knowledge, 
which she made for the benefit of her children. This work, 
and all her productions of an earlier date than the 9th of 
February, 1709, were consumed in the fire at Epworth. She 
afterward wrote a treatise on the Evidences of Revealed 
Religion, which, considering that it preceded the great 
work of Bishop Butler by more than a quarter of a century, 
must be yet looked upon as a very remarkable production. 
It was a tract of about thirty duodecimo pages ; and it was 
followed, in 1711-12, by a second edition of it, which con- 
sisted of about sixty pages quarto. She kept a diary of 
her religious exercises ; and the record was consecrated, like 
all her literary labors, to the edification and instruction of 
her children. Her letters to the different members of her 
family are excellent specimens, for that period, of English 
composition ; and they would make a most interesting and 
useful volume. She was in every way a woman of real intel- 
lect : " She appears to have had the advantage," says Dr. 
Clarke, "of a liberal education, as far as Latin, Greek and 
French enter into such an education. She had read much ; 
and thus her mind was cultivated. Both logic and in eta- 
physics had formed a part of her studies ; and these acqui- 
sitions, without appearing — for she studiously endeavors to 
conceal them — are felt to great advantage in all her 
writings." 2 

Samuel Wesley, senior, died before the religious move- 
ment of his sons became established ; but it is well known 
that he approved of the course of John and Charles so far as 
he lived to see and understand it ; and it is equally certain 
that Mrs. Wesley remained, after the departure of her hus- f 
band, to realize and relish the full development of Methodism 
in England. Samuel, the eldest son, and Mehetable, the 
fourth of her seven daughters, for a long time either resisted 



2 Wesley Family, p. 418. 
4* 



82 KANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 

or neglected the new order of things ; but, before their 
deaths, they each became heartily reconciled to the enter- 
prise of their distinguished brothers ; and their individual 
reputations, therefore, whatever they were, aud whatever 
they now remain, must be received and reckoned upon as 
component parts of the rank and power of existing Metho- 
dism, 

The entire household, in fact, if we take the whole life of 
each of its several members, was Methodistic. It was the 
first Methodist family ; and such a family, in their religious, 
literary, and social character, has scarcely a parallel on the 
pages of ancient or of modern history. " Such a family," 
says Dr. Adam Clarke, a contemporary in part and most com- 
petent judge, "I have never read of, heard of, or known ; 
nor, since the days of Abraham and Sarah, and Joseph and 
Mary of Nazareth, has there ever been a family to which the 
human race has been more indebted." 3 It was a family of 
thirteen children, three of whom died in infancy ; but the 
remaining ten lived to maturity ; and there was not one of 
the number who did not exhibit a character which would 
have arrested the attention of society in the busiest period 
or portion of the world. 

Samuel, the oldest of the children, was a gentleman of 
great scholarship and genius, a graduate of Oxford, for a long 
time principal usher of the celebrated government school at 
Westminster, afterward head-master of the free school at 
Tiverton, a powerful contributor to the periodical press of his 
day, and one of the first lyric poets of his literary age. 
Several volumes of his poems are still extant ; and among 
them is that inimitable hymn, now seen in almost every 
hymn-book of our language, and in many of them without 
proper credit, whose initial verse — 

" The morning flowers display their sweets " — 



s Wesley Family, p. 609. 



RANK AND POWEE OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 83 

will recall to the mind of every reader a series of stanzas not 
to be surpassed for every excellence that can enter into a 
composition of this kind by anything now in print. This I 
assert without the fear of successful contradiction ; and had 
the author never written a line, before or after the publica- 
tion of this piece, he would have established his right to the 
position here assigned him. But he wrote many others ; and 
those at all learned in hymnology will remember not a few, 
which have survived all the mutations of time, and now stand 
preeminent among productions of this class. Samuel Wesley, 
however, was not only a lyric but a general poet. He wrote 
in almost every strain and measure. He wrote satires, epi- 
grams and epitaphs in verse. He wrote in the heroic, 
comic, and didactic styles with almost equal ease. He was 
one day found writing poetical answers to the critical labors 
of Dr. Watts; and on another, he was inditing metrical 
epistles, friendly and advisory, to Alexander Pope. He was 
a particular and cherished friend of Pope ; he lived on the 
most intimate terms with Prior and even with the great 
Addison himself; Lord Oxford, the Mecamas of his age and 
country, was his patron ; Lord Atterbury was his protege ; and 
his rank as a first-class litterateur, as a good prose writer, 
and as one of the most splendid of the modern lyric bards of 
our language, was acknowledged, not only by these masters 
of English composition, but by the general consent of the 
literary circles of his times. 

Emilia Wesley was the eldest of the grown-up daughters 
of this family, her older sister, Susannah, having died in 
childhood. It was for her benefit in particular that her 
mother wrote the treatise, still preserved in manuscript, 
which John Wesley afterward indorsed with the following 
title : " My Mother's Conference with her Daughter." It is 
a work of sixty quarto pages ; it was written as a sort of 
manual of education for the mental and moral cultivation of 
her child ; and that child seemed, from the first, to possess 



84 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 

an intelligence worthy of this zeal. Dr. Clarke speaks of her 
as having a memory of great tenacity and readiness ; he says 
it was " incomparable ;" he particularly mentions her taste, 
which he declares to have been "exquisite;" he gives h er 
" a peculiarly benevolent and even temper;" he informs us 
that her mind had received the benefit of the most careful 
and assiduous cultivation ; and he adduces the testimony of 
her brother John to show how, in one direction at least, she 
had profited by this uncommon culture : " My sister Harper " 
— for this washer name after marriage — " was the best reader 
of Milton I ever heard." And this declaration carries more 
with it than would at first appear ; for an artistic reader of 
so great a classic as John Milton, such as Emilia Wesley 
must have been, could have been nothing less than a person 
of great natural genius, and that disciplined to a very lofty 
pitch. None but a genius can read artistically, or with 
great excellence, the productions of a genius ; and to this 
native ability there must always be added the results of the 
most perfect education. Reading is as difficult an art as 
speaking ; and no man can be an orator, whatever be his 
circumstances, without the natural gift of eloquence and a 
most thorough cultivation. It is the same with reading; 
there have never been more than a very small number of 
readers, worthy of the name, in any generation ; and when 
John "Wesley, therefore, says of his sister Harper, that she 
was the best reader of Milton that he had ever heard, he at 
once ranks her, so far as his decision can go, with such per- 
sons as Mr. Murdoch and Mrs. Butler, who occasionally have 
risen up to show to the world how the thoughts and emotions 
of departed genius can be made again to five. But Emilia 
Wesley was as beautiful in person as she was remarkable for 
intellectual qualities. Her sister Mehetable describes her 
general bearing, as well as her inward character, in a familiar 
poetical epistle addressed to her just prior to her marriage ; 
and when it is remembered that the Wesley family never 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 85 

flattered one another, that they were quite as likely to rebuke 
as to eulogize, the picture thus drawn of this eldest daughter 
of the Epworth rector will be regarded as a good daguerreo- 
type of a leading member of the first Methodist family. In 
the first stanza of the poem the writer gives to her subject 
the threefold excellence comprehensive of every other grace : 

" Virtue, form, and wit in thee 
Move in perfect harmony ;" 

and then she goes on to give a more particular analysis : 

" True wit and sprightly genius shine 
In every turn, in every line : — 
To these, skillful Nine, annex 
The native sweetness of my sex ;" 

but not satisfied with this expression of her 
ceeds : 

" Thy virtues and thy graces all, 
How simple, free and natural ! 
Thy graceful form with pleasure I survey ; 
It charms the eye — the heart — away. 
Malicious Fortune did repine 
To grant her gifts to worth like thine ;" 

and, after this ampler portrayal of her idea, the limner takes 
one more general look at the beautiful image which she had 
undertaken to sketch, and imparts to it the concluding 
stroke : 

" To all thy outward majesty and grace, 
To all the blooming features of thy face, 
To all the heavenly sweetness of thy mind, 
A noble, generous, equal soul is joined, 
By reason polished and by arts refined. 
Thy even, steady eye can see 
Dame Fortune smile or frown at thee — 
At every varied change can say — It moves not me !" 

It seems, indeed, that there was strength as well as beauty 



ideal, she pro- 



86 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



of intellect in the character of Emilia Wesley — the two quali- 
ties of greatness so seldom united in one individual ; what is 
still more rare, this combination of excellences was equally 
apparent in her person, which, it appears, was striking for 
its " majesty and grace ;" and then, in spite of all these 
qualities of intellect, and this magnificent beauty of form, 
she was endowed with that moral firmness which so marked 
every member of her family, and which was so necessary to 
the true balance and highest perfection of her character. The 
reader can scarcely help seeing before him, from even the 
little that is here recorded of this lady, the image of a person 
who could not fail to command the admiration of all who had 
the happiness to know her. Beautiful in face and figure, 
majestic in her address and carriage, and yet as graceful and 
winning as she was dignified, with an intellect of great power 
and compass, strengthened and refined by education, of the 
most exquisite sensibility and taste, and firm as a rock in her 
moral sentiments, could she now stand up in her native land, 
or upon this continent, as the best reader of the great epic of our 
language, as her experienced -and gifted brother would justify 
us in supposing she might even yet be, how would she draw, as 
a star of the first magnitude, the most brilliant and intelligent 
of our cultivated age, could she commit herself to such a 
labor, to sit in rapt silence at her public or private readings ! 
But she was simply a private lady, and for the greater part 
of her long life a widow, who, as a hearty recipient of the 
doctrines and discipline of her honored brother, is to be 
regarded only as an attractive member of the first Methodist 
family. 

The next of the daughters of this family was Susannah, the 
second of that name, the first having died in infancy, as has 
been mentioned, and, though she had the misfortune to marry 
a wealthy and tyrannical debauchee, whom her mother pro- 
nounced to be a man " little inferior to the apostate angels in 
wickedness," she gave ample evidence, in her childhood days, 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 87 



and in the interims of her womanly and almost perpetual 
grief, that her mind was of that high order which charac- 
terised her kindred. True genius is always spurred by mis- 
fortune, so long as it is supportable ; but when the burden of 
trouble becomes too excessive for mortal strength, the heart 
breaks down, and all the fine mental qualities are crushed. 
This is particularly true of woman, who, as the vine that 
entwines itself around the oak, seeks naturally for an object 
in which to trust ; and how many are they, the daughters of 
affliction as well as light, sensitive, timid, confiding, whose 
lives would otherwise have been wreaths of beauty around 
the pillars of society, have been torn from their native soil, or 
blasted in the first flowering of their superior life, by the in- 
sufferable woes of domestic wretchedness ! This was the 
history of John Wesley's second sister. With a remarkably 
attractive personal appearance, such as would most power- 
fully rouse the passion of a refined and wealthy libertine, and 
with a mind and heart and outward bearing, which should 
have exalted him from the deep of sensuality to the loftiest 
pitch of human excellence, with the blood of all the Wesleys 
throbbing in her arteries, and in spite of the imperial indepen- 
dence and spirit of that blood, she had no sooner put on the 
name of Ellison, her unworthy husband, than her nature gave 
way, surrendering itself to a sorrow which knows no healing, 
and which makes every true woman feel that she cannot de- 
sire to live. She was a lady of great mental strength ; she 
was witty, playful, and even facetious in her natural disposi- 
tion; there was a vein of romance running like a golden 
thread through her character ; it ought to have been her 
destiny, according to the evident designs of nature, to throw 
upon the common life of that serious and earnest family a 
perpetual sunshine of innocent and profitable hilarity; but 
alas ! it was her fortune to begin her separate existence under 
circumstances which utterly paralyzed her power, and sealed 
up the sources of her intellectual enjoyment, leaving to her no 



88 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



occupation but to weep. That stream of happiness, which 
came gushing from her overflowing heart, and made a per- 
petual verdure and a universal joy, was dried at the fountain- 
head ; and her life, which should have been a life productive 
of the works of real genius, which should have made rich and 
varied contributions to the literature of her age and language, 
was broken under the iron sway of a man, who saw no other 
value in a woman than that looked for by the eye of lust. 

The third daughter of this remarkable household was Mary 
Wesley, whom Dr. Clarke mentions as the favorite of her 
father's family. Though somewhat damaged in her form, by 
a childhood sickness and some carelessness of her nurse, she 
was yet surpassingly beautiful in person, brilliant in her 
countenance, and exceedingly graceful and attractive in her 
manners. " Her face," says Clarke, " was exquisitely beauti- 
ful ;" and that, according to the same testimony, " was a fair 
and very legible index to a mind and disposition almost 
angelic." Her sister Hetty, who has already been quoted, 
,and who, as Clarke says, was " no mean judge of worth," 
always wrote of her as " one of the most exalted of human 
characters." All that need be said of her intellectual cultiva- 
tion is, that she was the daughter of Susannah Wesley, the 
most skillful educator of her age. But Mary died in early 
womanhood in becoming the mother of her first child. Though 
sharing largely hi the common talents of her kindred, she 
lived not to give public proof of her ability ; but her portrait 
has been sketched by the poetical biographer of her family. 
Photography itself could scarcely give us a better idea of her 
person, which, from the causes already stated, must have been 
under the ordinary size, but singularly engaging : 

"Pleasing thy face and form, though heaven confined 
To scanty limits thy exalted mind. 
Witness thy brow serene, benignent, clear, 
That none could doubt transcendent truth dvrelt there ; 
Witness the taintless luster of thy skin, 



BANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



89 



Pure emblem of the purer soul within : 
That soul, which, tender, unassuming, mild, 
Through jetty eyes with tranquil sweetness smiled. 
But ah ! could fancy paint, or language speak, 
The roseate beauties of thy lip and cheek, 
Where nature's pencil, leaving art no room, 
Touched to a miracle the vernal bloom ! 
Lost though thou art, in Stella's deathless line 
Thy face immortal as thy fame shall shine !" 

But Mary Wesley was not a woman of mere wit and 
beauty. Her heart was as remarkable as her head. Her 
moral nature, like that of her father and mother, and of every 
one of her brothers and sisters, was her glory and her 
strength. The truthful pen, upon which I have already 
drawn so largely, presents us a perfect image of her moral 
and mental character : 

" To soundest prudence, life's unerring guide, 
To love sincere, religion without pride ; 
To friendship perfect in a female mind 
Which I can never hope again to find ; 
To mirth, the balm of care, from lightness free, 
Unblemished faith, unwearied industry ; 
To every charm and grace combined in you, 
Sister and friend — a long and last adieu I " 

The interest of these members of the Wesley family draws 
me into greater length than I intended; and I introduce 
the next in order, Mehetable Wesley, otherwise known by 
her noms de plume of Stella and Granville, with the fore- 
boding that the wished for brevity will be still less possible 
in her case, for she is certainly one of the most striking cha- 
racters, not only of that family, but of her literary age. She 
was remarkable from her earliest childhood ; for when she 
was but eight years old, she was so familiar with the Greek, 
that she could read the Testament in that classic language ; 
and, at the dawn of womanhood, she was not only a lady of 



90 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 

great personal attractions, but a poet of British reputation, 
and a scholar among the learned. She was a great reader of 
the Greek and Roman classics; and she formed her style, 
both in prose and verse, upon those acknowledged models. 
With less of the purely romantic in her composition than was 
possessed by her sister Susannah, she had even more wit, 
more humor, more mirthfulness ; she carried sunshine wher- 
ever she chanced to go ; her cheeks were dimpled, her lips 
were wreathed, with almost a perpetual smile ; and her heart 
seemed to beat, or bound, with the rapturous emotions of a 
continual joy. In the midst of all this buoyancy of temper, 
there was that depth of thought, of sentiment, of purpose, so 
characteristic of every member of this family. This latter 
trait gave the greater charm to her transcendent beauty, 
which, during her girlhood, must have been equal to any 
thing at that time known in England. It was so remarkable, 
at all events, as to be noticed in the literary productions of 
her day. In one, it is said of her : " Mr. Highman, who knew 
her when she was young, told me she was very handsome /" 
and in another, there is a poetical portrait of her person, as 
well as of her mind and heart, which may be fully trusted as 
coming from a" source entirely independent of her family. 
She is called in this piece Granvilla, probably from some 
romantic incident of her life ; and the sketch was drawn, not 
to obtain her favor, but to repay her for the influence of her 
genius upon the writer, and to promote her merit : 

" Fain would my grateful muse a trophy raise 
Devoted to GranvihVs lasting praise ; 
But from what topic shall her task begin ? 
From outward charms? Or richer stores within? 
'T were difficult with portrait just to trace 
The blooming beauties of her lovely face : 
The roseate bloom that blushes on her cheek, 
Her eyes whence rays of pointed lightning break ; 
Each brow the bow of Cupid, whence her darts 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 91 



With certain archery strike unguarded hearts ; 

Her lips, that with a rubied tincture glow, 

Soft as the soothing sounds which from them flow." 

This, without doubt, was intended to present the material 
outlines of a most radiant woman ; and the readers of the 
magazine, in which it is still found, must have understood it 
so ; but they could not fail, at the same time, to find them- 
selves yet more deeply interested in the poet's description of 
her intellectual worth : 

" But ! what words, what numbers shall I find, 
To express the boundless treasures of her mind, 
Where wit and judgment spread their copious mines, 
And every grace and every virtue shines!" 

Her poetical powers are set forth in still more glowing 
strains : 

" nymph ! when you assume the muse's lyre, 
What thoughts you quicken and what joys inspire ! 
Pale Melancholy wears a cheerful mien, 
Grief smiles, and raging passions grow serene ! 
If themes sublime, of import grand, you try, 
You lift the attentive spirit to the sky : 
Or, change the strain, and sporting subjects choose, 
Our softening souls obey the powerful muse. 
Yet 'tis, Granvilla, not thy smallest praise 
That no indecent thought profanes thy lays ; 
Like thy own breast, thy style from taint is free, 
Censure may pry, but can no blemish see." 

These lines, and the entire poem from which I have ex- 
tracted them, were sent by Miss Wesley to the Gentleman's 
Magazine for publication ; but the author of them, who signed 
himself Sylvius, as if he had been inspired with a truly 
pastoral admiration of his favorite, complains to her, in a suc- 
ceeding number, in a strain as full of feeling as it is of wit : 



92 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



" Allowed by bright Granvilla to peruse 
The sprightly labors of her charming muse, 
Enraptured by her wit's inspiring rays, 
I chanted ready numbers to her praise : 
She, pleased, my unpremeditated lines 
To the recording magazine consigns : — 
But would you be to best advantage known, 
Print not my verses, fairest, but your own !" 

The advice here given, however, was but rarely followed. 
The compositions of this lady were found in the Poetical 
Register, in the Christian Magazine, in the Arminian 
Magazine, in the Gentleman's Magazine, and in several of 
the poetical collections of the Wesleys ; but she could never 
be prevailed upon to publish a complete edition of her poems. 
Had they been thus given to the world, they would have 
maintained their place among works of genius ; they would 
have been handed down forever from generation to genera- 
tion of the Wesleyans, of whose body she was a devoted 
member; and they would have conferred upon her now 
almost forgotten name a poetical immortality. But, like the 
most of her sisters, she was weighed down with a perpetual 
affliction. Her husband, a man of neither position, nor worth, 
nor moral character, was a constant shame and grief to her 
delicate and shrinking nature. " She was very unfortunate,' 
says a contemporary, " as you will find by her poems, which 
are written with great delicacy, but so tender and affecting, 
that they can scarce be read without tears." If this be so, 
what must have been the anguish of her who wrote them ! 
It would be easy, from the extant productions of this child of 
sorrow, sent here of heaven to be a child of song, to justify 
the loftiest panegyrics that have been pronounced upon her 
genius. Her address to her fallen husband, tender and ter- 
rible by turns, though unsuccessful in recalling him to the 
paths of sobriety and virtue, is one of the most touching and 
powerful compositions in the language. Her Lines written 



KAXK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



93 



when in deep Anguish of Spirit, are also almost incompara- 
ble for depth of tone and beauty of expression. Her Fare- 
well to the World is the self-indited requiem of a broken 
heart, reminding the reader of the talents and the fate of 
Mozart, and, as a work of art, equal to anything from the pen 
of Addison. But all these pieces are too lengthy for quotation. 
There is one, howeyer, out of the many which I find it diffi- 
cult not to reproduce, at least in part, which, by reason of 
its brevity, I will give the reader as a specimen of her powers 
of almost extemporaneous composition. It is the little poem 
entitled A Mother's Address to her Dying Infant ; it was 
indited from her pillow during her confinement with the 
child which was perishing before her eyes by convulsions ; 
and the reader may easily perceive, from the poem itself, and 
from the well-known sorrows from which she could fervently 
ask her Maker to be relieved, that the verses flowed from the 
bottom of her heart : 

" Tender softness ! infant mild ! 
Perfect, purest, brightest child ! 
Transient luster ! beauteous clay ! 
Smiling wonder of a day ! 
Ere the last convulsive start 
Rends thy unresisting heart ; 
Ere the long enduring swoon 
Weigh thy precious eyelids down ; 
Ah, regard a mother's moan, 
Anguish deeper than thy own ! 
Fairest eyes, whose dawning light 
Late with rapture blest my sight, 
Ere your orbs extinguished be, 

Bend their trembling beams on me ! * 

Drooping sweetness ! verdant flower ! 

Blooming, withering in an hour ! 

Ere thy gentle breast sustains 

Latest, fiercest, mortal pains, 

Hear a suppliant ! let me be 

Partner in thy destiny ! 



94: RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



That, whene'er the fatal cloud 
Must thy radiant temples shroud; 
When deadly damps, impending now, 
Shall hover round thy destined brow, 
Diffusive may their influence be, 
And with the blossom blast the tree /" 

• When Anne Wesley, the fifth of the seven daughters, was 
married to John Lambert, her brother Samuel sent them a 
beautiful epithalamium, which Dr. Clarke wished he had the 
means of putting into the hands of every newly-married 
couple in the kingdom ; it is a poem of solid wisdom and of 
exquisite beauty of conception and expression ; it gracefully 
points out a humble and holy life to be the way of duty and 
of earthly bliss : 

" Let them be humble, pious, wise, 
Nor higher station wish to know ; 
Since only those deserve to rise, 
Who live contented to be low ;" 

and it would seem that the persons addressed, whether of 
their own choice, or from this brotherly suggestion, took the 
road to happiness thus portrayed : 

" Through diligence and well-earned gain, 
In growing plenty may you live ; 
And each in piety obtain 

Kepose that riches cannot give." 

Whatever else this couple had, it is certain that they had 
repose ; they lived in all quietness, having a competence of 
the things of this life, and looking with peaceful anticipations 
* to the superior blessings of another ; for, while every other 
brother and sister was called upon to ask for relief or comfort 
of their brother John, " the commoner almoner of the family," 
as he is styled by Dr. Clarke, there is no record or tradition 
of any application of this kind from Anne ; and the reasonable 
conclusion, that they passed their days in unambitious ease, is 



bans: and power of exg-lish Methodism. 95 



nearly all that is now known of the probable fortunes of their 
life. That Mr. Lambert was a gentleman of fine education is 
distinctly asserted of him ; that his wife had mind, and culti- 
vation, and genius, perhaps equal to those of the most gifted 
of her kindred, can scarcely be doubted by any one who re- 
collects what eyery other member of this household was. 
Xor is the lack of literary remains any proof of the want of 
genius. It is well known that necessity, since the world 
began, has been the chief stimulant to intellectual labor. The 
history of literature is but little more than the history of men 
and women who had small reliance for a livelihood except upon 
the coinage of their brains. Look at Shakspeare, a poor boy 
holding the horses of gentlemen before the theaters of London, 
till he learned to live by the labors of his pen. Look at Milton, 
born of affluent parents and for years maintaining a high rank 
among the office holders of the British government, but pro- 
ducing his greatest work only when stript of his patrimonial 
estates and turned out of all employment by the resentment 
of his enemies ; and that i mm ortal epic, the exclusive sale of 
which should have made him the wealthiest gentleman of 
England, he sells for twenty-five dollars, and at once hands 
the money to his baker. There was Joseph Addison, the 
first prose- writer of the English language, five hundred pages 
from whose pen should have made him as wealthy and as in- 
dependent as a peer of the realm, wrote thousands of pages 
of the most charming character, clear as the sunlight and as 
beautiful as a flower garden, and yet was compelled to obtain 
a portion of his needed income by performing the drudgery 
of certain petty offices till he could write no longer, when he 
eked out the remainder of his days on a paltry pension. 
Smollett, whose works are still one of the treasures of our lan- 
guage, wrote in penury and died a beggar in a foreign land. 
Goldsmith lived a beggar, and, after having written the best 
fiction and thrown off some of the most splendid poetical 
creations now known in any language, and all to procure the 



96 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



means of living, died insolvent. Cowley died of melancholy 
brought upon him by a combination of poverty, over-exertion, 
and disappointment. Collins, whose wants had driven him 
to labor beyond his strength, in a fit of desperation burnt an 
entire edition of his immortal odes, because the world did 
not take them from him fast enough to meet the demands of 
his existence. Johnson, as every one knows, began writing 
in a garret, and wrote in proportion to his necessities, all the 
while fretted by his want of the success he felt conscious of 
deserving ; but he was too strong at heart to break down, or 
even bow, under the weight of his labor and misfortune ; and 
he continued to the close of his life to conquer a place and 
the means of existence by the productions of his pen. Pryden 
wrote by the day, and received his pay at night, like any 
fourth-rate penny-a-liner of our times. Dr. Lightfoot, the 
leading oriental scholar of his age, toiled like a galley-slave 
for money, and produced the splendid collection of his works 
under the daily lash of want. Poor Chatterton did even 
worse than this ; having sent forth some of the finest speci- 
mens of composition to be found within the circle of English 
literature, and receiving nothing but neglect, he determined 
not to endure the common fate of authorship ; and so, bid- 
ding a silent adieu to his widowed mother, who could not 
support him longer without his cooperation, he closed his 
unhappy days by drinking poison. The whole line of author- 
ship, from Chatterton back to Homer, and forward to the 
hard-working authors of our own generation, show^s us little 
else than a series of indefatigable laborers spurred to their 
employment by the want of bread. But I have mentioned 
cases enough for the establishment of a fact so generally ac- 
knowledged ; and I have taken my examples from the coun- 
try and historic period of the subject of this paragraph. It 
is clear enough that the literary exertion of every people, 
with individual exceptions, is the result of some strong neces- 
sity for labor ; and, as Mrs. Lambert had all the comforts and 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



97 



luxuries of life at hand without the condition of manual or 
mental toil, it is presumable that she lacked only the stimulus 
necessary to genius, and not the possession of that genius 
which was the common inheritance of her family. There is 
one service she performed to the cause of literature, at least 
to the literature of Methodism, which, in a great measure, re- 
pays us for the lack of any productions of her own. She was 
the collector and preserver of all the fugitive compositions of 
her kindred ; it is to her diligence and care, in this capacity, 
that we are indebted for nearly everything we know respect- 
ing the lives, characters and literary efforts of her less noted 
brothers and sisters, and even of her mother ; she seems to 
have had a passion, which was shared by her amiable and 
accomplished husband, to gather and preserve whatever could 
be procured of their ephemeral efforts ; and this may have 
been the work to which a wise Providence, who saw from the 
beginning the position which her family were to occupy in 
the history of these latter ages, consecrated this one member 
of a most gifted race by not permitting it to be taxed to the 
drudgery of ordinary literary labor. 4 

Miss Martha Wesley, the sixth of the Wesley daughters, 
became the wife of an English clergyman, whose name was 
Hall. Martha was the favorite of Mrs. Wesley ; and Charles 
wondered how a woman of his mother's strength of mind 
could be led to indulge so much partiality as was shown to 
his sister ; but it seems that the character of this daughter 
was so peculiarly satisfactory to a parent, that it is easy 

' The name of Chatterton has been mentioned in the list of hard-work- 
ing and disappointed authors ; his life and labors have moved to tears the 
sensitive of more than his own generation ; but it is not generally known 
that his first production, composed in his twelfth year, was a satire written 
in condemnation of a backsliding Methodist, who had abandoned his faith 
and left the connection out of mercenary motives. Chatterton's mother 
was a hearer of Mr. Wesley ; and Chatterton himself was one of the earliest 
defenders of Wesleyan Methodism. 

5 



98 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 

enough to see how it might make a very decided and perma- 
nent impression upon her mother. Dr. Clarke represents her 
and her brother John as so strikingly alike in their personal 
appearance, that, had both been dressed in male or both in 
female garments, it would have been impossible for him, who 
was so perfectly familiar with the family, to have distinguished 
them. They were equally alike, too, in their intellectual and 
moral qualities. With something of the poetical in her com- 
position, her strength lay in her logical ability, in which she 
was a match for almost any person of her acquaintance. She 
was a friend and favorite of Dr. Samuel Johnson. She visited 
familiarly at his house; she was admitted freely into his 
domestic circle ; she was invited by him, at one period of her 
life, to make his residence her home ; and she was one of a 
very few individuals, male or female, whom he ever suffered 
to contradict him. " It is no wonder," says Dr. Clarke, " that 
Dr. Johnson valued her conversation. In many cases it sup- 
plied the absence of books ; her memory was a repository of 
the most striking events of past centuries ; and she had the 
best parts of all our best poets by heart. She delighted in 
literary discussions, and moral argumentations, not for dis- 
play, but for the exercise of her mental faculties, and to 
increase her fund of useful knowledge ; and she bore oppo- 
sition with the same composure as regulated all the other 
parts of her conduct." One of the slightest specimens of 
these discussions, at the table of Dr. Johnson, chanced to be 
listened to by Boswell, and so this Wesley daughter finds a 
place in his life of the great moralist. It was on Easter Sun- 
day, April 15, 1781, that Mr. Boswell found a party at 
Dr. Johnson's dinner table, among whom were Mrs. Williams, 
Mrs. Du Moulin, and Mrs. Hall. " I mentioned," says the 
narrator, " a kind of religious Robin Hood society, which met 
every Sunday morning at Coachmakers'-hall for free debate, 
and that the subject for this night was the text which relates, 
with other miracles, what happened at our Saviour's death: 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 99 

4 And the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints 
which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resur- 
rection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.' 
Mrs. Hall said it was a very curious subject, and she should 
like to hear it discussed. Johnson replied, somewhat warmly, 
4 One would not go to such a place to hear it — one would not 
be seen in such a place — to give countenance to such a meet- 
ing. I, however, resolved that I would go.' 'But, sir,' 
said she to Johnson, 4 1 should like to hear you discuss it.' 
He seemed reluctant to engage in it. She talked of the resur- 
rection of the human race in general, and maintained that we 
shall be raised with the same bodies.' Johnson : 4 Nay, 
madam, we see that it is not to be the same body, for the 
Scripture uses the illustration of grain sown. You cannot 
suppose that we shall rise with a diseased body ; it is enough 
if there be such a sameness as to distinguish identity of per- 
son.' She seemed to be desirous of knowing more, but he 
left the question in obscurity." Mrs. Hall's religious influence 
over Dr. Johnson was decided ; and she never failed, on a 
fit opportunity, to throw out a thought, or a suggestion, which 
was sure to make an impression upon a mind like his. 44 One 
day," says Clarke, 44 when Mrs. Hall was present, the doctor 
began to expatiate on the unhappiness of human life. Mrs. 
Hall said, 4 Doctor, you have always lived among the wits, 
not the saints ; and they are a race of people the most unlikely 
to seek true happiness, or find the peace without price.' " 
Mrs. Hall made very profound observations in philosophy, 
particularly in relation to God as manifested in creation. One 
of her characteristic sayings was, 44 What would have been 
the inclination of a kind nature was made a command, that 
our beloved Creator might reward it." The revolutionary 
maxim — Vox popidi, vox Dei, was once repeated in her pre- 
sence, and the speaker went on to enforce the idea, that the 
public voice was the voice of truth. 44 Yes," said Mrs. Hall, 
14 and the public voice in Pilate's hall was, 4 crucify him ! 



100 BANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



crucify him !' " The glittering sophism never received a 
better answer. In this unobtrusive manner, this lady exerted 
a strong and long-continued influence upon Dr. Johnson, and 
upon such men as Garrick, and Burke, and the wits of the 
famous Soho club, with whom she associated on terms of 
great personal popularity. She respected the abilities of 
these distinguished characters, but was not dazzled by their 
genius, for she used to exhort her youthful associates " to 
avoid that blind admiration of talents which is apt to regard 
temper and the moral virtues as secondary and this advice 
was sometimes given in the company of the most brilliant 
men of letters of Great Britain. There was a similarity be- 
tween her genius and that of Dr. Johnson in several particu- 
lars ; the resemblance was most of all striking in the circum- 
stance that neither of them could ever bear to converse, or to 
hear conversation, on melancholy subjects. There is one 
trait, on the contrary, in which they were equally dissimilar. 
Johnson, though grave and powerful, was frequently not only 
witty but terribly caustic and even withering in his sarcasm. 
Mrs. Hall conscientiously discouraged wit ; her brother 
Charles used to say that she was " too wise to be witty ;" 
but she possessed all the elements of this sparkling talent ; 
and there is an instance given where, in a debate with John- 
son, who had thrust her with what power he had, the lady 
had the courage and ability to retort on him with such success 
as to make him the momentary laughter of the company. 
Scarcely any other person of her day would have dared to 
risk such an encounter with the great autocrat of British 
learning ; but her victory was so complete, and her position 
with her assailant was so much to her advantage, that Johnson 
not only yielded with an elephantine grace to his defeat, but 
at length joined in the laugh raised and enjoyed at his 
expense. There is no doubt, indeed, from all that remains 
of Mrs. Hall, and especially from the company she kept, that 
she was received as one of the first literary women of her 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 101 

generation; but she left no works. Her marriage was ex- 
ceedingly unfortunate. Her husband, falling from his original 
character of respectability, and sinking from one depth of 
infamy to another, became at last so corrupt that it was inde- 
cent for any woman to be with him. With this disadvantage 
to overcome, the talents and virtues of his wife were such as 
to raise her to the summit of social consequence ; and she 
was enabled to drown her misery in the conversations of the 
great and good ; but she had no heart left for literary labor ; 
and the result is, her career is comprised in the single sen- 
tence, that, gifted to the first degree with genius, and edu- 
cated according to her endowments, she led a high and 
influential life in the society of the leading characters of her 
day, among whom she was acknowledged as an equal, and 
died at an extreme age universally lamented by men of 
letters. 6 

The last of the seven Wesley daughters, Kezziah Wesley, 
was all her days an invalid, and died as she was ripening into 
womanhood. She followed for a few years the profession of 
a teacher ; her school was at Lincoln ; and she was greatly 
respected by every member of her father's family, as well as 
by the public. There is nothing from her pen but a few 
letters to her relatives ; in these we find that easy and natural 
diction, and that exquisite felicity of poetical quotation, so 
characteristic of her kindred ; but we must lay her in her 
grave; the monument we raise over her must be a shaft 
broken near its base ; and the world must never know what 
reasons a longer fife would have furnished for a more glowing 
record. One thing is true of every one of her brothers and 
of her sisters. Though giving early proofs' of their mental 
character, there was not a specimen of marked precocity 
among them; they all ripened slowly, attaining their full 
maturity at a period of life rather beyond the average of the 



6 Wesley Family, pp 558-597, and Bo-swell's Life of Johnson. 



102 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 

gifted of mankind ; and there is little doubt, therefore, that 
Kezziah, had she reached an age corresponding to the com- 
mon lot of her family, would have made a reputation worthy 
of her name and origin. She had the blood of the Wesleys 
in her ; and the value of that blood, even when diluted by 
admixture with that of an inferior race, is witnessed in the 
remarkable talents, and often in the genius, of the children of 
the succeeding generation. The last surviving son of Martha, 
for example, the beautiful, the accomplished, the very pious 
"Wesley Hall, who died at the age of fourteen, was such a 
prodigy of mental and moral superiority, that his character 
was at once immortalized in verse : 

" Where is the fair Elysian flower, 

The blooming youth that charmed our eyes ? 

Cut down and withered in an hour, 
But now transplanted to the skies. 

He triumphs o'er the moldering tomb ; 

He blossoms in eternal bloom ! 

" Nor did he perish immature, 

Who, starting, won the shortened race, 
Unspotted from the world, and pure, 
And saved and sanctified by grace. 
The child fulfills his hundred years, 
And ripe before his God appears !" 

There was also Miss Sarah Wesley, attendant and friend of 
her aunt Hall, who seems to have been a lady of strong intel- 
lectual character and of great personal attractions. Her 
brother Charles, too, born in Bristol in 1757, was a musical 
prodigy from his earliest childhood. When an infant his 
mother used to lull him to sleep by playing to him on her 
harpsichord, an instrument resembling the modern pianoforte ; 
when a little older, she would tie him before the instrument 
to his chair, allowing him to amuse himself by drumming 
upon the key-board ; and in process of time, before he was 
four years old, he one day surprised his father by playing an 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 103 

air correctly, in proper accent and measure. Soon afterward, 
his father took him to London, where he so struck the leading 
musicians that they proposed to recommend him for admis- 
sion among the king's boys. At the age of six, he was placed 
under the tuition of a master at Bristol, who put him at once, 
without the usual introductory exercises, to the study of the 
works of Corelli, of Scarlatti, and of Handel; and it was 
thought, that, at the age of twelve, there was no person in 
England able to surpass him in executing the compositions of 
these masters. Such was the genius of the elder of the 
Rev. Charles Wesley's sons ; but the younger, Samuel Wesley, 
must be considered as having surpassed his brother, as he 
combined the poetical with the musical abilities of his kindred. 
He could play the organ when but three years old ; at eight, 
he attempted the composition of an oratorio, some of the airs 
of which were pronounced by Dr. Boyce, a musical authority 
of London, " among the most pleasing he had heard ;" and at 
a later period, he composed a high mass and sent it to Pope 
Pius the Sixth, who thanked the composer in a Latin epistle 
sent through his English apostolic vicar. There is a story 
related of little Samuel that must be regarded as an astonish- 
ing evidence of precocity. His brother, still a youth, was 
selected to play a violin solo at a concert before the corpora- 
tion of the city ; but he was called away from home, just 
before the time, when Samuel was chosen to take his place ; 
Charles, however, unexpectedly returned, which caused 
Samuel to be put aside ; and the boy resented this levity of 
treatment in a poetical epistle to Dr. Ludlow, his musical 
friend, which, as a specimen of juvenile genius, is worth more 
than a thousand concerts. Milton and Pope are both cele- 
brated for their early poetical compositions ; but neither of 
them has left to the world any childhood performance supe- 
rior to the Appeal of the second son of the Rev. Charles 
Wesley : 



104 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



" To you, dear doctor, I appeal — 
To all the tuneful city ; 
Am I not used extremely ill 
By the musical committee ? 

" Why, 'tis enough to make one wild, 
They court, and then refuse me ; 
They advertise and call me ' child,' 
And like a child they use me. 

" Excusing their contempt, they say, 
Which more inflames my passion, 
I am not grave enough to play 
Before the corporation. 

" To the sweet city-waits although 
I may not hold a candle, 
I question if their worships' know 
The odds 'twixt me and Handel. 

"A child of eight years old, I grant, 
Must be both light and giddy — 
The solidness of Burgan want, 
The steadiness of Liddie. 

" Yet quick, perhaps, as other folks, 
I can assign a reason, 
And keep my time as well as Hoiks, 
And come as much in season. 

"With Bristol organist, not yet 
I come in competition; 
Yet let them know, I would be great — 
I do not want ambition. 

" Spirit I do not want, or will, 
Upon a just occasion, 
To make the rash despisers feel 
My weight of indignation. 

" The trodden worm will turn again, 
And shall not I resent it ? 
Who gave the sore affront in vain — 
They would with tears repent it. 



RANK AND POWEK OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 105 



" Still will I fret, and fume, and rage, 
And keener wax, and keener, 
Unless they prudently assuage 
My anger with a Steyner. 1 ' 

It will be recollected that Pope's earliest extant poem was 
written at the age of twelve, and Milton's at fifteen, while 
here is one, in good rhyme and measure, composed by this 
scion of the "Wesley family but eight years old. The truth is, 
there never was a drop of Wesleyan blood, coming from the 
Epworth rector and his wife, but it carried genius in it. 
They were the most remarkable family, not only for religion, 
but for intellectual ability, for a combination of the higher 
qualities of reason, memory and imagination, to which must 
be added the gift of music, of which we have any record in 
modern history. The names of John and Charles, indeed, are 
not required to make full proof of this assertion ; the less 
known members of the general household are enough to 
establish it beyond a question ; but when it is remembered 
that Charles Wesley, besides being a great scholar, was the 
first lyric poet of his age and country, and that John Wesley 
was the most voluminous author of his century, though he 
had the personal oversight of the Wesleyan reformation in 
Europe and in America, there can remain, as it seems to me, 
no thought of competition among the most literary families 
of recent generations. If it is a law in human nature, that 
no people can ever arrive at a consciousness of real greatness 
without having a noble ancestry to inspire them with reve- 
rence for their origin, a primeval age of heroism to look back 
upon, it must be confessed that Methodism is peculiarly for- 
tunate in its first historic family ; and the rank and power of 
Methodism, the world over, and in all ages, will have this 
advantage, that its form, spirit and tendencies were given to 
it and sanctioned, not by those of little mind and vulgar 
education, but by persons of the highest moral aim, who were 

5* 



106 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 

also the intellectual associates of Addison, Pope, Swift, 
Garrick, Burke and Johnson. 

It must be remembered, however, that as yet no estimate 
has been made, no representation given, of the literary labors 
of the two most distinguished of the Wesleys. Charles 
Wesley, though an able and industrious preacher, and the 
author of a collection of sermons, is known as the lyric poet 
of Methodism, whose pen was so prolific in poetical compo- 
sition, that from the duodecimo volume to the pamphlet of 
two or three sheets, his distinct publications amount to forty- 
eight in number. He left in manuscript several thick quarto 
volumes of sacred and miscellaneous poems. His fame rests 
not, however, on the quantity, but on the quality, of his pro- 
ductions. His prose is simple, neat, and yet elegant compo- 
sition, reminding the reader, every now and then, of Steele's 
contributions to the Spectator. His diction is as pure as that 
of Addison, but he had not the talent at latent humor, and the 
grace of winding off his periods, of the classic and immortal 
Clio. But in lyric poetry, the English language has as yet 
produced no one entirely his equal. Let any competent critic 
look through the whole range of English lyric poetry, from 
the rugged attempts of Sternhold to the sentimental hymns 
and psalms of Dr. Watts, and unless prejudiced by ecclesias- 
tical connections, the balance of lyric genius will be found to 
fall in favor of the Wesleyan bard. Dr. Watts, as I think, 
is Mr. Charles Wesley's superior in the general structure of 
his sentences, as well as in the flow and softness of his verse ; 
his figures, however, are drawm too much from nature, and 
yet too little from that part of nature which has been rendered 
sacred and familiar by the penmen of Holy Writ; there is a 
conceit, a prettiness, in the style of Dr. Watts, which we 
expect to find in the smaller poets of the sentimental class, 
but which mar the simple grandeur of devotional composi- 
tions. When a man lifts up his voice in the praises of 
Almighty God, he does not wish to trifle with such delicacies 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM, 107 

as rainbows and roses, but to utter the deep emotions of a 
broken or confiding heart. Dr. Watts, however, is almost 
always liable to introduce the images of a superficial imagina- 
tion into the sublimest productions of his genius. Charles 
Wesley, though keenly alive to everything beautiful in the 
material universe, rose so high in his lyrics as to lose sight 
of terrestrial objects, or touched upon them only for a mo- 
ment to take his flight to more glorious themes. Wesley is 
never sentimental ; he never adorns his poems with the 
fancies and bagatelles of the poetic art ; he never fetters the 
soaring spirit by a burden, however gay and sweet, of em- 
pyrean stars and the flowers of earth. Watts often begins 
his hymns where the lark closes his morning song — " at 
heaven's gate ;" and he then as frequently descends and 
perches upon some pretty bush, or lights upon a green and 
flowery bank, to conclude an anthem in the audience of the 
beasts and birds, which should have closed at the foot of the 
very throne of God. Wesley, on the other hand, begins 
where Watts terminates his songs, and then rises at once, on 
the pinions of a lofty and victorious faith, till, like the rapt 
apostle on the isle of the apocalypse, he falls prostrate amidst 
heavenly splendors too refulgent for mortal sight. Watts, 
and his school of poets, are warmly sensuous, praising in 
reality the works and workmanship of God in the name of 
glorifying God himself. When looking at the life of faith on 
earth, the soft and smoothly-flowing Watts would set the 
soul to singing : 

" There is a land of pure delight, 
Where saints immortal reign ; 
Infinite day excludes the night ~. 
And pleasures banish pain. 

" There everlasting spring abides, 
And never-withering flowers ; 
Death, like a narrow sea, divides 
This heavenly land from ours. 



108 RAHK AXD POTTER OF EXGLISH METHODISM. 

" Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood 
Stand dressed in living green ; 
So to the Jews old Canaan stood 
When Jordan rolled between." 

That is all like Watts. It is precisely what would haYe been 
expected from his pen; and it is seen that "pleasures," 
" infinite day," " everlasting spring," " never- withering 
flowers," " sweet fields " and " living green," all sensuous 
images of material joy, are the staple of every stanza. The 
same style of sentimentalism runs through all the lyric poetry 
of Stennet, Steele, Addison, Opie, and all the poets of the 
school of Watts. Stennet wants the man of God to console 
himself for the troubles of this world by standing " on Jor- 
dan's stormy banks " and looking over into Canaan's " fair 
and happy land," where he sees nothing but 

" Sweet fields arrayed in firing green 
And rivers of delight." 

Steele, like Plato, regards us as living herein a sort of dun- 
geon ; and the highest joys of faith consist, according to his 
lyric verse, in throwing our mental vision forward to the 
light and glory of the coming world : 

" Far from these scenes of night, 
Unbounded glories rise, 
And realms of joy and pure delight 
Unknown to mortal eyes. 

"Fair land ! — could mortal eyes 
But half its charms explore, 
How would our spirits long to rise, 
And dwell on earth no more !" 

The charms of heaven are made up, in the mind of Steele, of 
what is most dazzling and captivating to " mortal eyes ;" and 
a similar sensuousness marks the best passages of Addison, 
who, in the most beautiful of all his hymns, which many a 



BANK iND POWER OF EXGLISH METHODISM. 109 



good man has adopted as his evening and morning pillow 
prayer, desires the believing heart to trust in that great 
Shepherd whose goodness and skill had " prepared his pas- 
ture " as a celestial paradise : 

" When in the sultry glebe I faint, 

Or on the thirsty mountain pant, 

To fertile vales and dewy meads, 

My weary, wandering steps he leads, 

Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow, 

Amid the verdant landscape flow. 

" Though in a bare and rugged way, 
Through devious, lonely wilds I stray, 
Thy bounty shall my pains beguile, 
The barren wilderness shall smile, 
With sudden greens and herbage crowned, 
And streams shall murmur all around!" 

Mrs. Opie, in the excess of this style of sensuous worship, is 
not satisfied with the pleasures of a single sense, but blends 
the enjoyments of several, not only within the compass of a 
poem, but oftentimes in the same line, and not seldom in a 
solitary figure : 

" There seems a voice in every gale, 
A tongue in every flower, 
Which tells, Lord, the wondrous tale 

Of thy almighty power ; 
The birds that rise on quivering wing, 

Proclaim their Maker's praise, 
And all the mingling sounds of spring 
To thee an anthem raise." 

This tribe of lyric poets, in fact, can find no words with 
which to celebrate the glories of that inner life, which lives 
and is ever to live by faith on the Son of God, not drawn 
directly from the scenes and pleasures of this beautiful but 
transitory world. Even Cowper, whose genius was more 
spiritual than that of either of the poets mentioned, mars the 
loftiest of his hymns by condescending to represent the Pro- 



110 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 

vidence of God by comparing it to the growth of a flowering 
plant : 

" His purposes will ripen fast, 
Unfolding every hour ; 
The bud may hare a bitter taste, 
But sweet will be the flower ;" 

and Milton, too, the most sublime of modern poets, whom his 
latest and most learned biographer represents as the least sen- 
suous of all the great bards of his time, and who lashed his 
Mammon because 

" e'en in Heaven, his looks and thoughts 

"Were always downward bent, admiring more 
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold, 
Than aught, divine or holy, else enjoyed. 
In vision beatific " 

in his Christmas hymn, man's universal anthem at the birth of 
Christ, describes rather than utters the joy of a ransomed 
world, and commands the planets and the rolling thunder to 
make the chorus in which they should have only joined with 
the bounding heart of a redeemed and triumphant race : 

"Ring out ye crystal spheres, 
Once bless our human ears, 

If ye have power to touch our senses so ; 
And let your silver chime 
Move in melodious time ; 

And let the base of Heaven's deep organ blow ; 
And with your ninefold harmony, 
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony." 

Milton's defence is, that his Christmas hymn, like his hymns 
of paradise, which he puts into the mouth of our first parents, 
was made to be read, not sung ; and it would be entirely 
satisfactory if the same thing could be said for the poets of 
the school of Dr. Watts. It is possible, indeed, that Addison 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. Ill 

never dreamed of anybody's wanting to sing the beautiful 
composition from which I have quoted, or any other of his 
so-called hymns ; it is equally possible that the same criti- 
cism would be simple justice to the memory of Steele ; but it 
is certain that Watts, as well as Stennet and Mrs. Opie, wrote 
expressly for the church ; and yet, a very large proportion of 
the lyric poems of Dr. Watts consists of descriptions of 
scenes calculated to inspire the reader with poetic feeling, 
rather than to supply language to the worshiping spirit, which 
yearns for something through which to pour out the religious 
emotions that come gushing from the depths of the heart. As 
a general poet, Watts stands, I think, somewhat higher than 
Charles Wesley ; his imagination was more active ; his admi- 
ration of nature was more absorbing ; and his versification is 
softer, smoother, and more fluent. As a- lyric poet, Charles 
Wesley occupies, according to my judgment, a much more 
eminent position than that of Dr. Watts. His hymns are not 
descriptive poems ; nor are they weakened by an excess of 
material imagery ; nor do they seem to have been written to 
be read. They are songs ; they are deeply religious songs ; 
they are personal songs, not made to show how another man 
might sing, or how men ought to sing, or what reasons they 
have for singing, as is the case with a large part of the 
hymns of Dr. Watts ; but they are the words employed by 
the individual worshiper, in which the " he " and " they " of 
Watts are replaced by the more direct " I " of all real praise. 
They are the words of the soul, not when touched by the 
beautiful forms of nature, but when roused by that " beatific 
vision," spoken of by Milton, or lost in the blaze of that 
" realizing light " of faith, which the worshiper feels to be the 
substance of his own experience, an emanation from himself. 
In the very first verse of the first hymn of the Methodist col- 
lection, Charles Wesley, personating every individual who 
worships God from his own heart, gives the key-note to Wes- 
leyan hymnology when he exclaims : 



112 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



" for a thousand tongues to sing 
My great Redeemer's praise, 
The glories of my God and king, 
The triumphs of his grace. 

" Jesus ! — the name that charms our fears, 
That bids our sorrows cease ; 
'Tis music in the sinner's ears, 
'Tis life, and health, and peace. 

" He breaks the power of cancelled sin, 
He sets the prisoner free ; 
His blood can make the foulest clean ; 
His blood availed for me /" 



The reader will see at once how free these stanzas are from 
all description, from all sensuous imagery, and how personal 
they are, making every man that sings them feel that they are 
the expression of his own glowing spirit. A congregation 
cannot utter such a hymn as a congregation ; for it disinte- 
grates the most compact assembly, bringing out the distinct 
individuality of each component element ; and then, instead 
of running off like Watts into a poetic rhapsody of how the 
material world should feel in the presence of such a Saviour, 

" 0, for this love, let rocks and hills 
Their lasting silence break," 

the poet calls on those who had received the benefits of 
Christ's passion to join, in this song of praise : 

" Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb, 
Your loosened tongues employ ; 
Ye blind, behold your Saviour come, 
And leap, ye lame for joy !" 

It was a remark of Dr. Watts, that he would give all that 
he had ever written to have been the author of Charles 
Wesley's hymn, entitled " Wrestling Jacob ;" but I cannot 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 113 

think that that poem is the best of those composed before the 
decease of Dr. Watts ; and John Wesley, referring to this 
generous concession of the departed bard, wonders what he 
would have said, if he had lived to read several of the subse- 
quent compositions of the Wesleyan poet. As a poem, 
Wrestling Jacob leaves nothing to desire, nothing for the 
severest critic to propose ; it is less lyrical, however, than 
dramatic ; it is more in the style of Watts than anything else 
written by Charles Wesley at that date ; it is quite equal for 
sublimity to Milton's Christmas hymn ; but it always sounds 
better from the pulpit, when read by a clergyman competent 
to render it in full force, than from the quire, which finds it 
impossible of adaptation to the demands of music. It is sur- 
prising, certainly, how the author of this remarkable poem 
has wrought out the history of that process which we call 
conversion, giving in the progress of the piece the successive 
steps taken in passing over from a mere intellectual assent to 
Christianity as a system to that termination of the struggle 
when the victorious soul cries out : 

" Lame as I am, I take the prey ; 

Hell, earth, and sin, with ease o'ercome ; 
I leap for joy, pursue my way, 

And as a bounding hart, fly home, 
Through all eternity to prove, 
Thy nature and thy name is Love." 

But the poem must be read, not sung, to make a full dis- 
covery of its merits ; and this is only saying, that, as a general 
poet, Charles Wesley has written one piece, at least, surpass- 
ing everthing from the pen of Dr. Watts ; but a better com- 
parison of the two hymnists, as hymnists, will be made by 
placing before us the acknowledged master-piece of the one, 
and then laying by the side of it one or two of the other, if 
the reader will only give to each the best rendering within the 
compass of his voice and taste : 



114 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



" My God the spring of all my joys, 
The life of my delights, 
The glory of my brightest days, 
And comfort of my nights : 

" In darkest shades, if he appear, 
My dawning is begun ; 
He is my soul's sweet morning star, 
And he my rising sun. 

" The opening heavens around me shine 
With beams of sacred bliss, 
If Jesus shows his heart is mine, 
And whispers I am his. 

" My soul would leave this heavy clay 
At that transporting word, 
Run up with joy the shining way, 
To embrace my dearest Lord. 

" Fearless of hell and ghastly death, 
I'd break through every foe ; 
The wings of love and arms of faith 
Shall bear me conqueror through." 

There it is, then, the master-piece of Watts in full, without 
the amendments of Mr. Wesley, which, Dr. Milner admits, 
were necessary to make it perfect. The following is what 
Milner says of the poem as a whole : " This hymn is almost 
without 4 spot or blemish,' if we except the last line of the 
fourth verse, which has certainly been amended by Wesley. 
For felicity of expression, strength and tenderness of feeling, 
and beautiful pictorial truth, it has never been surpassed ; it 
is a sublime communion with the Deity made visible to the 
eye of faith, and brought near with the cords of love, giving 
birth to a majestic burst of impassioned and irrepressible joy 
and triumph." But that burst of joy and triumph, let it be 
observed, occurs in the very last stanza, while all the preced- 
ing stanzas are marked, with all their sweetness and melody 
of versification, by that " pictorial " style which mars so much 



EAXK AXD POWER OF EXGLISH METHODISM. 



115 



the hymns of Dr. Watts. As a piece of poetical composition, 
it is beautiful beyond a question ; but as a song, it has too 
much of the material world, and too little of the soul of man. 
It has a good deal of personality in it, thus approaching 
Charles Wesley's style more nearly than any other of Watts's 
hymns ; but there is nothing positive in the experience of that 
personality ; the person singing it asserts nothing for himself, 
but opens every strain with the conditional if or would, 
or similar term of doubt ; and it is not the language of a 
believer, 

" Who knows his sins forgiven," 

but of a man looking out of himself upon some imaginary 
condition, which, did he only enjoy it, would give him all the 
transport described, not felt, in the successive stanzas. It is 
directly here that the reader will find the chief difference be- 
tween Watts and Wesley. Watts is forever telling how 
gloriously a man would feel if he only enjoyed religion, how 
deeply he must suffer without this enjoyment, or how miserably 
his days would waste along should he cast away his confidence 
and return to the vanities of this transitory life. Wesley tells 
how the true Christian, or the trembling sinner, or the cold 
backslider does feel; and he puts the words appropriate to 
their several circumstances into their own mouths, and makes 
them utter then- own present joys, and pains, and sorrows. 
Watts says — 

" Could we but climb where Moses stood, 
And view the landscape o'er ; 
Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood, 
Should fright us from the shore." 

Wesley, touching upon the same theme, exclaims : 

" Eejoicing now in earnest hope, 
I stand, and from the mountain top, 
See all the land below. 



116 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



Rivers of milk and honey rise, 
And all the fruits of paradise 
In endless plenty grow." 

"Watts, in portraying the condition of an awakened sinner, 
makes him look forward to his doom and say : 

" That awful day will surely come 

The appointed hour makes haste — 
When I must stand before my judge, 
And pass the solemn test. 

" Thou lovely Chief of all my joys, 
Thou sovereign of my heart, 
How could I bear to hear thy voice 
Pronounce the sound, Depart ! 

" The thunder of that dismal word 
Would so distress my ear, 
'Twould tear my soul asunder, Lord, 
With most tormenting fear !" 

There is personality in these lines, but everything terrible is 
yet to come ; the poor sinner is made to put far off the evil 
day and imagine a distress he only expects to feel. Now 
listen to Charles Wesley on the same topic : 

" Depth of mercy ! can there be 
Mercy still reserved for me ? 
Can my God his-wrath forbear? 
Me, the chief of sinners, spare ? 

" I have long withstood his grace ; 
Long provoked him to his face ; 
Would not hearken to his calls ; 
Grieved him by a thousand falls. 

" Now incline me to repent ; 
Let me now my sins lament ; 
Now my foul revolt deplore, 
Weep, believe, and sin no more I" 



Watts gives us a picture of a backslider mourning over his 



BANK AND POWEK OF ENGLISH METHODISM. J 17 



waywardness of life ; though written in the first person, it is 
nevertheless the picture of some other man ; it is simply the 
history of a backslider's life in general ; and when the wor- 
shiper stands up to sing, he feels that he is called to lament 
the condition, not of himself, but of some one else : 



" When my forgetful soul renews 
The Saviour of thy grace, 
My heart presumes I cannot lose 
The relish all my days. 

" But ere one fleeting hour is past, 
The flattering world employs 
Some sensual bait to seize my taste, 
And to pollute my joys. 

" Trifles of nature, or of art, 
With fair deceitful charms, 
Intrude into my thoughtless heart, 
And thrust me from thy arms. 

" Then I repent, and vex my soul, 
That I should leave thee so ; 
Where will their wild affections roll, 
That let a Saviour go ?" 



Hear, now, the personal anguish, the personal confession, and 
personal confidence of the returning prodigal, as he writhes, 
and laments, and trusts, in the words of Wesley ! 



" Yes from this instant, now, I will 

To my offended Father cry ; 
My base ingratitude I feel ; 

Yilest of all thy children, I ; 
jSTot worthy to be called thy son ; 
Yet will I thee my father own. 

" Guide of my life hast thou not been, 

And rescued me from passion's power ? 
Ten thousand times preserved from sir., 
Nor let the greedy grave devour ? 



118 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 

And wilt thou now thy wrath retain, 
Nor ever love thy child again ? 

" If thou hast called me to return — 
If weeping at thy feet I fall — 
The prodigal thou wilt not spurn, 

But pity and forgive me all, 
In answer to my Friend above — 
In honor of his bleeding love !" 

The distinguishing peculiarity of Wesley, as a lyric poet, is 
the same as that of Shakspeare among dramatic poets. He 
does not describe a character, or a passion, but enacts it. He 
throws himself into the attitude of the character which he 
wishes to represent, feels all that such a character himself 
could feel, and then utters the sentiments, the experience, of 
the character in the most fitting language. He is succes- 
sively, in obedience to this mode of composition, a lost and 
wretched sinner, withering and quaking under the anguish 
he carries in him ; then an awakened penitent, beating his 
breast like the praying publican ; then a new-born believer, 
trusting to the glimmering light that has dawned within him, 
but trembling lest the light go out and return him to the land 
of darkness ; then a confirmed and grown up Christian, strong 
in the faith once delivered to the saints, and working his way 
forward to yet loftier attainments ; then a miserable back- 
slider, who, having tasted of the good word of God and the 
joys of the world to come, finds nothing but emptiness in the 
most solid enjoyments of his sad estate ; then a repenting 
prodigal, whose soul is wrung with the wrong he has done 
the cause of his Lord and Master, and whose spirit moves, 
nevertheless, at the dear privilege of coming back again to 
his first works and to the pardoning love of God ; then a 
vigorous co-worker in the great enterprise of the world's 
redemption — a runner running like a herald with the trumpet 
of salvation at his lips — a fighter fighting the good fight of 
faith like a valiant soldier of the venerated cross — jubilant 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 119 

with the thought of his thus helping for Avar d an undertaking 
begun in heaven and to be completed in the ultimate regene- 
ration and renovation of this earth ; then a suffering saint, 
broken by misfortune, forgotten of his friends, neglected by 
the world, and yet singing : 

"Although the vine its fruit deny, 

Although the olive yield no oil, 
The withering fig-trees droop and die, 

The fields elude the tiller's toil, 
The empty stall no herd afford, 

And perish all the bleating race, 
Yet will I triumph in the Lord, 

The God of my salvation praise ;" 

then a prosperous member of the church on earth, favored 
with the smiles of Providence, rich in the abundance of his 
possessions, surrounded by all the seductions of the world, 
and yet breaking forth in the most decisive strains : 

" Yain, delusive world, adieu, 

With all of creature good ; 
Only Jesus I pursue, 

Who bought me with his blood ; 
All thy pleasures I forego ; 

I trample on thy wealth and pride ; 
Only Jesus will I know, 

And Jesus crucified ;" 

then an afflicted patient thrown upon a bed of pain, gradually 
sinking beneath the weight of his fleshly ills, but still exclaim- 
ing: 

"How happy every child of grace, 

Who knows his sins forgiven ! 
This earth, he cries, is not my place, 

I seek my place in heaven ; 
A country far from mortal sight, 

Yet, 0, by faith I see ; 
The land of rest, the saints' delight, 

The heaven prepared for me ;" 



120 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



then the recipient of unexpected health, restored by the spe- 
cial favor of his God, not turning away from his father as he 
finds himself receiving back his strength, nor repining at 
the severity of Providence, but rejoicing at the smitings of 
the needed rod : 

" How happy the sorrowful man, 

Whose sorrow is sent from above ! 
Indulged with a visit of pain, 

Chastised with a visit of love : 
The Author of all his distress 

He comes by affliction to know, 
And God he in heaven shall bless, 

That ever he suffered below ;" 

then a poor orphan, or a lonely widow, bowed down at times 
with a sense of their desolation, but delivered in good season 
from their distresses, and softly uniting in the strain : 

"Sorrow and fear are gone, 
Whene'er thy face appears ; 
It stills the sighing orphan's moan, 
And dries the widow's tears ;" 

then a possessor of much love toward God and humanity, not 
satisfied with present attainments, but calling to the great 
Fountain of this heavenly feeling to pour it more copiously 
upon him, in strains which the great Handel himself saw fit to 
set to music : 

" God only knows the love of God ; 
that it now were shed abroad 

In this poor stony heart ; 
For love I sigh, for love I pine ; 
This only portion, Lord, be mine ; 

Be mine this better part ;" 

then a communicant of this sacred gospel, whose soul is full 
of its holy comforts, and who, in his zeal to give an immediate 



SANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 121 



knowledge of it to all the world, feels almost impatient of the 
steady fervor of the pulpit, and from his seat in the house of 
God challenges and charges the ministry, the church and the 
people, to a greater energy and a more hearty work ; 

"Blow ye the trumpet, blow 

The gladly solemn sound ; 
Let all the nations know, 

To earth's remotest bound, 
The year of jubilee is come ; 
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home ; 

"Extol the Lamb of God, 

The all-atoning Lamb ; 
Redemption in his blood 

Throughout the world proclaim : 
The year of jubilee is come ; 
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home ; 

"The gospel trumpet hear- 

The news of heavenly grace ; 
And, saved from earth, appear 

Before your Saviour's face : 
The year of jubilee is come : 
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home 



then the faithful herald of this gospel, receiving the exhorta- 
tion of his brethren around him, or rapt into a still higher and 
holier transport by the visions of his own faith, replying: 



" Jesus, the Name high over all, 
In hell, or earth, or sky ; 
Angels and men before it fall, 
And devils fear and fly ; 

" that the world might taste and see 
The riches of his grace ; 
The arms of love that compass me 
Would all mankind embrace; 

6 



12"2 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



" His only righteousness I show, 
His saving truth proclaim : 
'Tis all my business here below 
To cry — Behold the Lamb ! 

" Happy if with my latest breath 
I may but gasp his name, 
Preach him to all, and cry in death, 
Behold, behold the Lamb!" 

There is no element of human experience, in fact, which 
Charles Wesley does not represent. The interior life of man, 
under all circumstances, and in every condition, seems to 
have been open to him ; and he entered in, seeking out all the 
wants and woes, all the griefs and fears, all the hates and 
ills, all the sorrows, loves, and joys, for the purposes of his 
sacred verse. Having, in his own varied experience, passed 
through about every struggle and every successive victory of 
a soul in its progress from the lowest deep of sin to the 
loftiest summit of Christian love, he was not under the neces- 
sity of describing conflicts and successes which he had only 
seen in others, but could at once throw himself back upon his 
own spiritual life, and utter from the depths of his inward 
nature what had been indelibly recorded upon the tablet of 
his heart. It is the same egotism that we find continually in 
the lyrics of the Hebrew hymnists and particularly in the 
psalms of David. The monarch minstrel is forever saying : 
" Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare 
what he hath done for my soul." God's friends are his 
friends ; God's enemies are his enemies ; he makes himself 
the representative of every experience of which he writes- ; 
and his revelations of the heart of man are so abundant and 
complete, that there is not an individual of the race, in the 
church or out of it, who is not made to express in some 
degree his own internal character, and that in the language 
of the first person singular, by the habitual use of these sacred 
lyrics. Watts was the translator of these poems ; he turned 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 123 

them into English verse ; but by this very process he was 
called upon to look out of himself and to describe what another 
man had felt ; and it is this fact to which he owes that imper- 
sonality, that sensuousness, that pictorial and descriptive style, 
which, however they may leave him a great poet, make him 
to be so little of a real hymnist. Charles Wesley, on the other 
hand, was no translator. He borrowed but very little even from 
the Hebrew psalmists. He knew that Judaism, at best but a 
mere schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, had never known, and 
therefore had not expressed, the mature experiences of the lat- 
ter and more perfect dispensation. He knew that he was writ- 
ing for a special dispensation of the work of God on earth, which 
seemed to be more marked by personal religion, and by all the 
traits of the higher life, than had ever before been known by 
men. He knew that this new dispensation, from the beginning 
a mystery of divine providence, and all the while sweeping 
onward with an increasingly mysterious power, might one 
day embrace a greater multitude of the human family than 
ever pitched their tents on the hills and in the vales of Pales- 
tine. He saw, he felt, that he was the divinely-commissioned 
bard, the poet-laureate, of a sublime and growing revival of a 
heartfelt religion, which could not be satisfied with the feebler 
experience and fainter thanksgivings of a nation and an age 
gone by, but which yearned for the very last and highest pos- 
sibility of the religious life, for the utmost of that real and 
personal work of the Almightly within the human soul, which 
constitutes the glory of the present period, and is to grow 
brighter and brighter till the millennial splendors shall break 
on the world like a second mid- day bursting on a former noon. 
He saw, he felt, that the songs to be written were to be 
written from the present, not from the past ; from the heart, 
not from history ; and that they were to be the hymns of a 
new era, such as every man w T ould be liable to hear half- 
silently warbling upon the wind-swept strings of that lyre 
that every one carries in him, but which had never yet been 



124 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 

written down and set to music. The warblings were not to 
be the echoes of any Orphic, or Attic, or even Jewish harp. 
They were to come fresh from the trembling cords of the soul, 
brushed into existence by the hand of the Almighty, and sent 
out upon the sonorous air to become the carmina sacra of 
rising generations. They were to be original productions, 
brought into being by a new and more powerful application 
of the Spirit of God to a redeemed man, and received by an 
ever-increasing multitude of men, who should be prepared to 
understand and sing them by the same superior work of 
grace. Dr. Watts, in a word, is the chief of those lyric poets 
who echo to our times the melodies of the Hebrew bard, and 
whose verse endeavors to relieve itself of this second-hand 
character by mingling with the ideas borrowed from the poet- 
king such sensuous descriptions of natural objects as seem 
most nearly allied to sacred topics. Charles Wesley, on the 
contrary, is the chief of those lyric poets of modern times, 
whose leading trait is their originality, who write what they 
know and feel, and who feel and know, for themselves, and in 
themselves, whatever is most beautiful, and true, and good in 
the heartfelt influences of the gospel of the Son of God. 6 

6 I am aware that this will appear to be a glowing estimate of the posi- 
tion of Charles Wesley as a lyric poet ; it would be easy, however, to 
sustain the estimate by quoting the opinions of many of the most eminent 
English critics. Isaac Taylor, for example (Wesley and Methodism, p. 9?,), 
a writer not to be suspected of Methodistic prejudices, says : "It maybe 
affirmed that there is no principal element of Christianity, no main article 
of belief, as professed by Protestant churches — that there is no moral or 
ethical sentiment peculiarly characteristic of the gospel — no hight or 
depth of feeling, proper to the spiritual life, that does not find itself em- 
phatically, and pointedly, and clearly conveyed in some stanza of Charles 
Wesley's hymns." And again (Wesley and Methodism, p. 95) the critic 
of Methodism affirms: "Among those to whose compositions millions of 
souls owe inestimable benefits, in this manner, Charles Wesley stands, if 
not foremost, yet inferior to few." It is evident that Mr. Taylor regarded 
Charles Wesley inferior to none ; but he deemed it less invidious to declare 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 125 



If, now, the rank and power of English Methodism can 
stand upon the credit of having produced the greatest lyric 
poet of these latter ages, and that without going beyond the 
limits of the first Methodist family, we shall find within that 
family also another individual, whose literary position will 
constitute a proper climax to a condensed account of this 
unrivaled household. Like all his brothers and sisters, John 
Wesley was a poet. There w T as a period of his life when he 
wrote a great deal of poetry on general subjects; but, after 
his conversion, he devoted his muse mainly to lyric verse. 
He translated a number of the most devotional of German 
hymns ; he composed several in English for the use of his 
societies; he aided his brother Charles by his cooler judg- 
ment and most judicious criticisms ; and he made many and 
decided improvements in the best hymns of Dr. Watts. 

his judgment in the subjunctive form ; for, in another place, he just touches 
on the name of Watts, while he dwells on the merits of the bard of Metho- 
dism ; and he closes up a very graphic picture of a Wesleyan congregation, 
singing the Wesleyan hymns, in very hearty words : " Thus it was that 
Charles Wesley, richly gifted as he was with graces, genius and talents, 
drew souls — thousands of souls — in his wake, from Sunday to Sunday ; 
and he so drew them onward from earth to Jteaven by the charm of sacred 
verse /" He speaks of him as " lofty, tender, pure, intense ;" and he says 
that his hymns created the existing epoch of lyric composition : " They 
may be regarded as the representatives of a modern devotional style, 
which has prevailed quite as much beyond the boundaries of the Wesleyan 
community, as within it." Nor did this seem to satisfy his sense of justice; 
but he proceeds, in direct terms, to place the Methodist poet quite in 
advance of the only rival he has ever had in the critical judgment of 
modern times : " Charles Wesley's hymns," says he (pp. 90-91,) " on the one 
hand, and those of Toplady, Cowper and Newton on the other, mark that 
great change in religious sentiment which distinguishes the times of 
Methodism from the staid nonconforming era of Watts and Doddridge." 
The verdict of Robert Southey, however (Life of Wesley, vol. ii. p. 101), 
whose work is considered as very unjust to Methodism, is still more to the 
point : " Perhaps no poems," he says, " have ever been so devoutly com- 
mitted to memory as these, nor quoted so often upon a death-bed." 



126 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



It has been seen how this last claim is sustained by the con- 
cession of Dr. Milner ; but the learned admirer of the Cal- 
vinistic hymnist by no means makes a full acknowledgment 
of the critical services of Mr. Wesley upon the hymns of Dr. 
Watts in general, nor upon that particular masterpiece so 
proudly quoted by him. I wish the reader to see, however, 
the extent of what that acknowledgment should have been. 
I desire him to turn back, and read over again — and that in 
his very best style of reading — the hymn referred to, as pub- 
lished and left by Dr. Watts. Then I would like to have 
him, with the same voice and manner, and with a critical eye 
upon the corrections of Mr. Wesley, render the hymn as it 
now stands in the Methodist hymn-book : 

"My God, the spring of all my joys, 
The life of my delights, 
The glory of my brightest days, 
And comfort of my nights : 

"In darkest shades if thou appear 
My dawning is begun ; 
Thou art my soul's bright morning star, 
And thou my rising sun. 

" The opening heavens around me shine 
With beams of sacred bliss, 
If Jesus shows his mercy mine, 
And whispers I am his. 

" My soul would leave this heavy clay 
At that transporting word, 
Run up with joy the shining way 
To see and praise my Lord. 

"Fearless of hell and ghastly death, 
I'd break through every foe ; 
The wings of love and arms of faith 
Would bear me conqueror through I" 



There, reader is the master-piece of Dr. Watts as left by 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 127 

Mr. Wesley. See how, by a few judicious touches, the spirit 
and power of the hymn are magnified ! See how the poetical 
description is taken out of it, and the personality of real wor- 
ship is put in ! Watts, as if he were speaking to a third per- 
son, and giving him a history of his religious life, says : 

" In darkest shades, if he appear, 
My dawning is begun; 
He is my soul's sweet morning star, 
And he my rising sun." 

That is mere description of something that has at former 
times taken place. It was such a poetic statement as was to 
have been expected of a theology, which makes a past expe- 
rience a perpetual hope, or an unchangeable assurance, of a 
final perseverance and salvation. But no such worship could 
satisfy the heart of Wesley. He could not be satisfied with 
description ; he did not trust to past experience ; he insisted 
on a man's feeling and knowing for himself, at the present 
moment, what a Christian may know and feel; the sensuous 
sweet morning star must be conformed to the more correct 
language of revelation ; the worship, too, must be carried on, 
not between the worshiper and his fellow-beings, to whom 
Watts supposes the singer to address himself, but between 
the soul of the worshiper and God : 

" In darkest shades, if Thou appear, 
My dawning is begun ; 
Thou art my soul's bright morning star, 
And Thou my rising sun !" 

Such are the alterations made upon this hymn. Such is 
the spirit of the numerous improvements effected by the 
poetical taste of Mr. Wesley upon all such hymns of Dr. 
Watts as were transferred by the founder of Methodism to 
the Wesleyan collection. Mr. Wesley took Watts' produc- 
tions very much as a master at school, conscious of his supe 



128 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



rior judgment, would take the productions of his pupils to 
correct them ; and the very fact, that Isaac Watts can now 
be set up by his admirers as the rival, or superior, of the 
Wesleyan hymnist, has been made possible, to an extent not 
dreamed of by those of them not critically acquainted with 
the subject, by the silent and as yet unacknowledged labors 
of John Wesley. 

The founder of Methodism, however, was not only a poet, 
but a scholar of the first class. He was a close student every 
day of his life, from early childhood to the very week he 
died. He enjoyed, it is true, while under his mother's tuition? 
and then in the most learned of the English universities, the 
highest educational advantages of his generation. But his 
best resource for intellectual cultivation was his indefatigable 
industry and perseverance, in which he never was excelled. 
For more than seventy years, including the long period of 
his itinerant labors, during which he was accustomed to 
preach several times a day, he read more pages than any 
other man in England. From the hour he entered the charter- 
house school, till he ceased to breathe, the two boundaries 
of a space of time longer than the allotted life of man, his 
taper could be seen burning in his room till about ten at 
night, and from the hour of four every morning. He read at 
his meals, on his walks, while riding in his carriage, and on 
horseback. It was thus that he realized what was only 
dreamed of by another great scholar of his country. It was 
a remark of Dr. Bentley, the first classical scholar of Great 
Britain, that he could read all the books in the world worth 
reading, would the Lord but give him eighty years of life and 
health. This eighty years of life and health, and that after 
he became a reader, were enjoyed by Mr. Wesley ; and every 
day of it was spent, though in the midst of many other labors, 
in perusing those standard productions of the great minds of 
every age, so desired to be studied by Dr. Bentley. He thus 
became a universal scholar; he mastered the circle of human 



BANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 129 



knowledge. There was no work of commanding genius, or 
ability, or learning, in any language then read by the most 
erudite of his generation, whose merits de did not know, and 
whose contents he did not understand. Though skilled in 
at least five of the languages of literary Europe, besides the 
classic and oriental tongues of antiquity, his favorite, next to 
his vernacular, was the German ; and he was the man who, 
more than all men preceding or following him, introduced to 
the literature of England and America the works of the great 
Teutonic masters. He opened the era, since made illustrious 
by a score or two of English and American literati, which 
now blesses the literature of both countries, and the inau- 
guration of which has been falsely ascribed to such men as 
S. T. Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle. The German era in 
English literature is the work of Mr. Wesley. Long before 
Carlyle or Coleridge, or any of their Teutonizing predecessors, 
had seen the light of day, John Wesley began to translate 
into English the hymnology and theology of the German 
fatherland. If there is anything beneficent, therefore, any- 
thing of promise, in the existing tendency of the English 
and American mind — and, in fact, of the mind of the existing 
literary nations — to look into the literature of that remarkable 
people, whose poets, critics, historians and scholars are the 
wonder and glory of the modern world, it is but simple jus- 
tice to say that the first distinguished example of it is to be 
found in the poetic and theological researches in the German 
language, made by Mr.Wesley. He was struggling, it is true, 
when making these researches, not for literary information 
but for spiritual light. He had made the acquaintance of 
several Moravian Christians, whose religious experience 
inspired him with admiration ; he took a tour to their settle- 
ments in Germany; he conversed with the most intelligent of 
their number ; he perfected himself in the reading and speak- 
of their language ; he went on, from this beginning, to form 
social connections with the leading reformers and scholars of 



130 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



their country ; he visited and conversed with such men as 
Count Zinzendorf and Swedenborg; and when he returned 
to England, he brought back what he ever after cherished, 
- not only a better idea of practical Christianity, but that zeal 
for the cultivation of German letters which, from him, has 
spread all over Europe, and over the continent of America, 
and into every land now visited by the missionaries and natu- 
ralists of the enlightened nations of the world. 

John Wesley was a literary man, not only by education, 
by taste, and by the accidents of his position, but by the 
manifold productions of his pen. There is scarcely any work 
performed by an author, which was not performed, and that 
most copiously, by him. He was a diligent translator ; he 
was equally industrious as an editor and annotator ; he com- 
piled, abridged and expanded books beyond the possibility 
of enumeration ; and his original works, which are mainly 
literary and theological, and yet covering nearly every prac- 
tical issue of his day, whether social, educational, political, or 
religious, if all printed out in the style now prevalent, w^ould 
of themselves make a larger collection than the average of 
professional men find themselves, in this country, able to 
possess. There are at this moment standing upon my shelves 
an entire edition of the Greek and Roman classics, embracing 
every extant work of standard reputation from the Orphica 
attributed to the monarch-bard of Thrace to the epistles and 
essays of Erasmus, and including every master-piece of the 
human mind for about three thousand years of time. I 
have before me, also a catalogue of all the publications of 
every kind made by Mr. Wesley ; and my judgment is, from 
such experience as I have had with books, that, if issued in 
t»he modern style, they would cover very nearly if not quite 
as much space, on the adjoining shelves, as is occupied by 
this entire collection of the extant literature of Greek and 
Roman fame. This, however, if found to be a fact, would be 
of inferior value to the fame of Wesley as a literary man, if 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 131 

his original productions were not known to be of the first 
order of merit. They are indeed, as many of my readers 
know by their own examination, of the highest rank. They 
do not need the reputation of their author, as the great 
reformer of modern times, and as the founder of the largest 
religious denomination now existing in Protestant Christendom, 
to raise or to hold them to this rank. The writings of John 
Wesley, from the off-hand journal of his life and labors, to 
the most elaborate of his productions, are marked by many 
of the rarest qualities of a great and comprehensive intellect. 
This is no fulsome eulogy. Though it will be impossible, in 
a production of this comprehensive and summary character, 
to give an analysis of Mr. Wesley's works by way of justify- 
ing the claim here made, it is particularly satisfactory that 
there is little or no need of any such critical examination of 
an author, whose works have been in print for more than a 
hundred years, and which have been read, either in their 
native dress, or in translations, all over Europe, throughout 
the continent of America, and in more distant lands, by a 
multitude of the inhabitants of this earth, rich and poor, 
ignorant and learned, quite beyond the reach of accurate 
computation. Were the task imposed upon me to make dis- 
covery of a solitary writer whose publications have been 
perused, in part, or in whole, by as many persons as have been 
some or all of the works of the Reverend John Wesley, I 
should not know what one to name. Think of him as a lyric 
poet ; think of him as a tractarian ; think of him as a dignified 
and yet popular pamphleteer ; think of him as a successful con- 
troversialist ; think of him as the translator, compiler, anno- 
tator, and abridger of the great productions of his age and 
of former ages ; think of him as an original author of a large 
number of standard volumes, whose sale, at first sufficient to 
make him a power in England, has been steadily and rapidly 
increasing for two or three generations ; think of the ten or 
twelve millions of the present generation, at this moment 



132 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



adhering to his principles, who read something of him — a 
hymn, a note, a tract, or the page of some publication — 
nearly every day they live; think how he is read on every 
Sabbath, all over Xorth America, in South America, in the 
leading languages of Europe, at all missionary stations of 
Methodism throughout the world, and on the bosom of the 
great waters ; and then tell me what personage, ancient or 
modern, I am to mention as his competitor. Some of the 
more popular of our novelists will probably be first thought 
of in this connection. The author of Uncle Tom has been 
actually set up as the most read of any writer of modern 
times. But what is the spasmodic reading of a year or two, 
however widely spread, compared with this constant perusal 
and daily use of the works of Wesley, which began to appear 
more than a century ago, and which are now more admired 
and read than in either of their three generations of popu- 
larity? The Waverley novels may be thought of; but 
Wesley is more read than Walter Scott. The psalms and 
hymns of Dr. Watts may be mentioned; and had John 
Wesley been only a hymnist, the reference might be suffi- 
cient; but Watts is used only in the English language, and 
in one particular exercise, while Wesley is read in English, 
French and German, the three universal languages, and on 
nearly every great social topic. The immortal allegory of 
the Bedford tinker may claim the palm ; and the Progress of 
the Pilgrim, without doubt, has really as many readers as 
any one extant production outside of the Bible ; but it is, 
after all, only a single work, on a single topic, and adapted 
to the taste of a particular class of readers ; while the pro- 
ductions of John Wesley are multitudinous, ranging from the 
heavy tome to the penny tract, and from the select of sacred 
subjects to those secular and popular themes, which, not only 
immediately but permanently, affect the millions of every 
generation in everv reading country. Weslev is more read 
than Milton, or Shakspeare, or even Homer — not because he 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



133 



gives evidence of greater literary genius — but. because his 
productions are religious works, which are always more 
widely circulated than publications on any other subject. 
There are but few in any nation capable of appreciating and 
enjoying even its own great classics. Kepler was willing to 
wait for centuries for a single reader ; and Herodotus is 
perused by a larger number now than in the days of the 
Greek republics. It is not the antiquity of a writer, how- 
ever, nor the time that he has occupied before the public, nor 
his literary merit even, which gives him the precedence for 
popularity as an author. The works of John Wesley are at 
this time more read, as I judge from a laborious calculation 
of the probable number of literary men in the existing lite- 
rary nations, than are all the Greek and Roman classics, from 
Orpheus to the flight of the Byzantine literati at the capture 
and fall of Constantinople ; and I do not hesitate to challenge 
the most competent of my readers, who know anything of 
the popularity of Mr. Wesley's works, to follow me in this 
computation. In fact, John Wesley, whose father was the 
first to give popularity to English literature, by founding the 
first literary periodical of his language, still maintains the 
credit of his race by being the most popular of recent writers ; 
and his popularity is based on such solid merits, as well as 
seconded by such growing power of the people called ^into 
confederate existence by him, that he is destined to be, more 
and more as the world advances, for his genius and his success 
combined, the flag-holder of English letters, the prince-regent 
of modern authors ! 

The earliest literary friend of English Methodism, outside 
of the Wesley family, was the Rev. Jean Guillaume de la 
Flechere, commonly known under his English name of the 
Rev. John Fletcher, a native of Switzerland, a graduate of 
Geneva, a gentleman of first-class abilities, a Christian of the 
most perfect and spotless purity, and an author of great 
industry and reputation. He u was a man," says Southey, 



134 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



" of rare talents and rarer virtue. ISTo age or country has 
ever produced a man of more fervent piety, or more perfect 
charity. N"o church has ever possessed a more apostolic 
minister." Mr. Fletcher was the defender of Methodism 
against outside attacks. If it was assailed as " a doctrine of 
devils," in the language of Toplady, one look to the " saint 
of Madely," as Mr. Fletcher has been styled, was enough to 
show the nature of its fruit. When assailed by argument, a 
more rare thing at the first, Mr. Fletcher's pen was at once 
relied on as was the spear of Achilles, which, according to 
the classic fable, could heal by its touch whom its thrusts 
had wounded. As a controversialist, Mr. Fletcher had this 
double power of laying an antagonist at his feet by the force 
of his great learning and resistless logic, and then raising 
him to self-respect, and to a respect for the system assaulted, 
by the power of a beautiful charity that never failed. The 
theology of John Calvin was, at that time, the prevailing 
theology of Europe, Luther having derived its substance 
from the Civitas Dei of St. Augustin, and the Geneva doc- 
tors having perfected and propagated it in full over the lead- 
ing nations of the world. It was this system which Method- 
ism was called first to meet ; for the Calvinistic divines 
united in an attack upon the Wesleyan theology of free grace, 
free will, and freedom of belief, more virulent than had been 
witnessed in the Christian church since the day of Tetzel. 
Wesley was too busy with his work of overseeing the great 
revival, which was spreading over England and into Ireland 
and Scotland, to manage the defense ; and so Mr. Fletcher 
took up his pen, and wrote incessantly, till near the day of 
his death, in reply to the assaults of Calvinism and in sup- 
port of the Wesleyan faith. No man could be better quali- 
fied for this important work. With those " rare talents " 
mentioned by Dr. Southey, there was coupled an education, 
obtained at the fountain-head of Calvinism, which gave him 
every advantage to be desired for this peculiar duty. He 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 135 



had heard Calvinism from his cradle ; he had studied it 
under its ablest representatives then living ; he had spent 
years in comparing it with the word of God ; he had rejected 
it after the most laborious examination in the light of revela- 
tion and of reason; and his convictions had been so clear, so 
positive, so potent, that he had openly renounced it before 
the world. He now siezed the weapon of the scholar, more 
powerful than battle-ax or sword, and wrote out a series of 
defenses, since known as Checks to Antinomianism, which 
left nothing to be done in that direction ; and if the ten vo- 
lumes of Mr. Fletcher are now not as much read, as they 
were in the day they were written and published, as has 
been disparagingly stated by Mr. Taylor, it is simply 
because they have performed their office in routing this class 
of the antagonists of Methodism from the " tented field." 
The " temper " in which " this saintly man " carried on this 
controversy was only equalled by that " distinguished 
ability " which Mr. Southey discovered in his productions ; 
and the poet-laureate of England, though no friend to 
Methodism, ascribes to Mr. Fletcher a genius which the con- 
troversialist had no chance to use. " His talents," he says, 
" were of the quick, mercurial kind ; his fancy was always 
active ; and he might have held no inconsiderable rank, both 
as a humorous and as an impassioned writer, if he had not 
confined himself wholly to devotional subjects." And Isaac 
Taylor, in the midst of the severest criticisms, admits this 
much : " If it be asked," he says, " what this Methodism is, 
about which the world, even now, has come to no settled 
opinion, an equitable reply may be obtained at Madely. The 
Methodism of Fletcher was Christianity, as little lowered by 
admixture of human infirmity, as we may hope to find any- 
where on earth ;" and if any reader wishes to verify all this 
just eulogy of the religious character, and intellectual abil- 
ity, and literary eminence of this defender of early Method- 
ism, I must refer him to Mr. Fletcher's works, which, in 



136 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



spite of the assertion of his opponents, are still looked to as 
the most unanswerable argument to be furnished from the 
controversial productions of the modern Church. 

Nearly at the same time that the Madely saint became a 
Methodist, the Wesleyan doctrine was espoused by the Rev. 
Thomas Coke, LL.D., a clergyman of the Church of 
England, and a scholar of British reputation. Dr. Coke is 
styled by Taylor " an apostolic man ;" he was the founder 
of the Wesleyan missions ; he gave up not only his person 
and his talents, but his fame, his ambition, and his fortune, 
which was very large, to the support and promotion of the 
Wesleyan reformation ; while his writings show that he 
might have reached the loftiest eminence among the literati 
of England, had his conscience been weak enough to give 
full scope to the natural aspirations of his intellect. His 
style as a writer is exceedingly neat, though plain and unam- 
bitious ; it is oftentimes elegant, dignified, and strong, while 
it carries every mark of a want of effort ; and it abounds 
with proofs of his great learning and severe mental discipline. 
It is certain that the man, who crossed the ocean eighteen 
times, between England and the United States, in the prose- 
cution of his missionary work, and who had the entire man- 
agement of the Wesleyan missions in their most critical 
period, could have but little time for literary undertakings ; 
and yet, so natural is it for an educated and enterprising 
person to employ his pen, that he became, in spite of all 
these labors, quite a voluminous author. His Commentary on 
the Scriptures, begun at the special request of his denomina- 
tion, has excellences peculiar to itself ; and my opinion is, 
that its real value has never been appreciated, not even by 
the Methodists. His Life of Wesley, written in conjunction 
with the Rev. Henry More, has taken its true place among 
the most valuable of the memoirs of that great man ; but his 
most distinguished work, by which he is known in literary 
circles throughout the world, is his History of the West 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 137 

Indies, comprised in three octavo volumes, and containing 
the natural, civil, and ecclesiastical history of each island, 
from the commencement of the European settlements upon 
them ; and in this production is seen the most abundant evi- 
dence of great natural abilities, developed by the widest cul- 
tivation, refined by art, and furnished with the most liberal 
supplies of accurate and useful information. 

It is a common prejudice, raised by the enemies of Mr. 
Wesley in the Church of England, and propagated by de- 
signing men ever since, that the lay-preachers employed by 
English Methodism, because not educated expressly for the 
pulpit, were men of mean origin and of no cultivation. This, 
however, is a great mistake. Mr. Wesley knew too well the 
advantages of mental discipline to place his cause into the 
hands of ignorant and stupid plodders ; and Dr. Southey, in 
spite of his leaning against Methodism, has devoted a couple 
of his finest chapters to a biographical account of several of 
this class of the Wesleyan preachers, whom he p resents as 
specimens of the whole body of them. He speaks of John 
Oliver, John Pawson, Alexander Mather, Thomas Olivers, 
George Story, Thomas Walsh, and others, as persons of highly 
cultivated minds, though they had been, prior to their em- 
ployment by Mr. Wesley, brought up to business. They 
were like Grant and RadclhTe, the Scotch lay-preachers of the 
present generation, whom the Kirk of Scotland honors with 
its patronage, while they return still greater honor to the 
Kirk by the use of their rich intellectual gifts and religious 
graces in calling sinners to repentance. In the same way, 
Mr. Wesley set to work a great amount of pious talent, which 
the professional clergy of Great Britain decried and misrepre" 
sented ; and there was among this class of men, besides their 
native keenness of mind given them by their business habits, 
a large amount of real learning. It often happens that there 
is a layman in the congregation of a regularly educated cler- 



138 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



gyman, who, for natural abilities, and even for the extent ot 
knowledge, is more than a match for his religious teacher ; 
and the thing peculiar in Mr. Wesley's plan of operations was, 
that, whenever he saw such men truly converted to God, and 
zealous to do what they could in the spread of practical reli- 
gion, he had the discretion and the courage to employ them. 
Of the persons I have mentioned, whom Dr. Southey singles 
out as representatives of their fellows, John Pawson, Alexan- 
der Mather, and Thomas Olivers, were individuals of more 
than ordinary education ; while John Oliver and George 
Story had received a still more liberal cultivation ; and 
Thomas Walsh, according to the decision of Mr. Wesley, a 
competent judge in such a matter, was one of the most learned 
men of his country and generation. John Wesley might be 
supposed to have had some ambition of being considered the 
ablest scholar of his connection ; but he freely sets Thomas 
Walsh, a man whose name is scarcely known in the world of 
letters, above himself in point of erudition, and in one depart- 
ment of knowledge above every man of his acquaintance. 
He represents him as being profoundly learned in Latin, 
Greek, and Hebrew, and " so thoroughly acquainted with the 
Bible that, if he was questioned concerning any Hebrew word 
in the Old, or any Greek word in the New Testament, he 
would tell, after a brief pause, not only how often the one or 
# the other occurred in the Bible, but what it meant in every 
place. Such a master of Biblical knowledge," he says, " he 
never saw before, and never expected to see again." Such 
men as these, learned but lost to the literary world in their 
higher work of calling sinners to repentance, have been con- 
tinually springing up on the itinerant field of Methodism; 
and their number has been so great, that, since the origin of 
the Wesleyan movement, the general scholarship of their day 
might have been matched by those of their own occupation, 
whose social position was very humble, and whose names, if 



BANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 139 



added to the brief list already given, would be as unknown 
to many of my readers as the names of the literary characters 
of China or Japan ! 

There were enough of these lay-preachers of early Method- 
ism, however, whose learning found a recognition and a re- 
cord in literary circles, not only to redeem the denomination 
in England from the false charge of illiteracy, but to give it a 
high credit among the reading and knowing classes. It 
would be useless to spend any time in detailing the learned 
labors of Dr. Adam Clarke, an itinerant preacher, who was 
everywhere known as the most erudite man of the world in 
his day ; his Commentary on the Scriptures, a work of six 
quarto volumes, concentrates the substance of all available 
knowledge to the single purpose of illustrating and confirm- 
ing the truths of revelation ; his published discourses are 
among the most able of those now existing in the English 
language ; and his miscellaneous productions prove him still 
more abundantly to have been a man worthy of his world- 
wide reputation. Xext to Dr. Clarke, if not before him, 
English Methodism cherishes the memory of the Rev. Richard 
Watson, whose talents were of the highest order, and whose 
learning was equal to the most profound of literary under- 
takings; his Institutes of Religion is a work of wide design, 
of vast research, and of the most happy execution ; his Ser- 
mons, collected in several volumes, rank higher in the deno- 
mination than those of Dr. Clarke, and as argumentative pro- 
ductions higher than those of Mr. Wesley ; his Theological 
Dictionary is remarkable for the amount and accuracy of its 
information, for its exhaustive manner of treating subjects, 
and yet for the almost unexampled condensation of its articles; 
and he showed himself, in every work he published, at once 
a scholar, a theologian, and a philosopher, with a breadth of 
view like that of Bacon, and with a ratiocinative genius as 
profound, as patient, as penetrating, as that of Locke. In 
the same connection stands the name of the Rev. Joseph 



140 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



Benson, another itinerant preacher, of whom it is enough to 
say, that, in England, his sermons are read with unabated 
enthusiasm, and his Commentary on the Holy Scriptures still 
published in every variety of form, and sold in uncounted 
quantities, takes precedence among the English Wesleyans 
of the more learned but less practical work of his celebrated 
fellow-laborer ; and these three names alone are sufficient, in 
a chapter that must hasten to its termination, to assure the 
reader that the middle period of English Methodism more 
than sustained the reputation given it by that inaugurating 
period, of which Thomas Coke, Thomas Walsh, and the 
Wesleys, were the literary representatives. 

Nor must it be thought that these specimens of rare attain- 
ments are confined to the former days of English Methodism. 
This is not so ; indeed, the present period is an era in its 
literary character; there is a wealth of literary men, and of 
literary productions, which Methodism in Great Britain has 
never before witnessed ; and there are many writers with 
pens which are ever active, and whose productions have 
acquired a British and American reputation. By a little 
attention to the subject for the last few years, I have been 
able to gather the names of more than one hundred and fifty 
living writers, ministers and members of the English Wes- 
leyan connection, who deserve respectable positions in the 
catalogue of British authors. They all merit a recognition 
in these pages ; but the list is too lengthy, and I must con- 
tent myself with a brief reference to a very few who, for 
accidental reasons, as well as for their abilities, are known 
about equally well on both sides of the Atlantic. There is 
the Rev. William Arthur, D.D., a young man of extraordi- 
nary intellect, whose Successful Merchant, Tongue of Fire, 
and other works, have given him a commanding place among 
religious writers. There is the Rev. John Beecham. D.D., 
whose Recovery of a Lost World, Remarks on Colonization, 
Remarks on Official Documents relating to New Zealand, 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 141 



and Visit to British America, have furnished proof of a great 
variety of first-class talent. The Rev. Jabez Bunting, D. D., 
the strongest man of English Methodism since the death of 
Wesley, too full of general labor to admit of much composi- 
tion, has yet exhibited the best order of literary ability in his 
Memorials of the Rev. Richard Watson. The Rev. George 
Cubitt, an untitled man, but worthy of almost any title, in his 
Dialogues, and his Outlines for Pulpit Preparation, and in 
twelve or more distinct publications, has taken a prominent 
place in his particular department. The Methodism in Ame- 
rica, by the Rev. James Dixon, D.D., and several occasional 
Discourses, have justified a reputation which is as well estab- 
lished in the United States as in England. The Rev. Dr. 
Etheridge, a distinguished orientalist, has given to the world 
the Syrian Churches, their Early History, Liturgies and 
Literature, with a Translation of the Four Gospels ; Horse 
Armoricae, Apostolical Acts and Epistles, with a Translation 
of St. Matthew and of Hebrews, from the Ancient Syriac ; 
Jerusalem and Tiberias, Sora and Cordova, a Survey of the 
Learning of the Jews, designed as an Introduction to the 
Study of Hebrew Literature, and the best life of Dr. Adam 
Clarke extant. The Rev. Thomas Jackson, D.D., is a more 
versatile author, among whose works are the following : 
Answer to the Question, Why are you a Wesleyan Methodist ; 
Christian Presbyters, their Office, Duties and Rewards ; 
Faithful Minister of Christ passing to his Final Reward ; 
Fulfillment of the Christian Ministry ; Letter to Dr. E. B. 
Pusey, being a Vindication of the Tenets and Character of 
the Wesleyan Methodists against his Misrepresentations and 
Censures ; Wesleyan Methodism a Revival of Apostolical 
Christianity; Expository Discourses on Scripture Facts and 
Characters ; the Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, comprising 
a Review of his Poetry, Sketches of the Rise and Progress 
of Methodism, with Notices of Contemporary Events and 
Characters ; and the Duties of Christianity theoretically and 



142 BANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



practically considered, a work on Moral Philosophy, and the 
ablest of his productions. The name of the Rev. F. A. "West, 
D.D., is known in this connection for a model specimen of 
biography, the Memoirs of Mrs. Gibson, and for a variety of 
Lectures, Sermons and Addresses. The Rev. F. J. Jobson, 
D.D., in his America and American Methodism, his Chapel 
and School Architecture, and his Mother's Portrait, ha? 
earned the position of a useful and attractive writer. The 
Rev. G. Turner has manifested no inconsiderable degree of 
critical and logical talent in his Constitution of Methodism, 
his Democratic Ecclesiasticism, his Divine Validity of Infant 
Baptism, his Old Protestant Doctrine of Justification by 
Faith Attested, and in several smaller publications. The 
Rev. A. Scott, professor in one of the Wesleyan theological 
institutions, has published two courses of Sermons, which 
stand very high as learned and masterly productions. The 
Rev. Robert Young's Australia and Tasmania, and his Xew 
Zealand and Polynesia, are works sought after by the highest 
class of readers in Great Britain. The Rev. J. H. Rigg, a 
gentleman beginning to be well known in the United States, 
has evinced in his Independency and Methodism Contrasted, 
and in his Essay on the Principles of Methodism, a tact and 
talent as a writer which the most'accomplished author of the 
age might afford to covet. But I must not blunt the edge 
of a just eulogy by drawing out this list to any greater 
length ; and time would fail me, should I attempt to bring out 
the individual merits of such writers as Marsden, and Sleigh, 
andPrest, and Vevers, and Williams, and the three Jacksons, 
and Fish, and Kendall, and Trefiry, and Steele, and Naylor, 
and Keeling, and Booth, and Bedford, and Hannah, and Ather- 
ton, and Wiseman, and of the scores of other gentlemen now 
living, whose pens have adorned the literature of English 
Methodism; but there are yet a couple ofW^esleyan authors 
whose productions cannot be passed over with a slight remark, 
or the bare record of their names. The first to be mentione i 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 143 

is the Rev. W. H. Rule, D.D., whose ten or twelve octavo 
volumes embrace a range of topics really remarkable, and 
whose style of execution is so easy and yet so learned, so 
fluent while it is yet so thorough, that it would be no extra- 
vagance to set this Wesleyan writer among the stars in the 
galaxy of British authorship ; and the second, the Rev. G. 
Smith, F.A.S., etc, a still more voluminous and able writer — 
the most voluminous, in fact, and the ablest of the literary 
men of English Methodism since the death of Watson — is 
received in England, and honored in her learned societies and 
circles, as one of the most brilliant lights in the firmament of 
her literary glory. These two writers alone, indeed, with 
Etheridge and Jackson, would be enough to hold up the 
standard of the literature of English Methodism ; while it 
must be evident that its entire amount is sufficient to give to 
the Wesleyan movement in Great Britain, so far as the pen 
can confer strength and position to any enterprise, a rank and 
power of no secondary consideration for so young a people. 
It has been quite generally imagined, I know, even by those 
admitting the high paternity of English Methodism, and the 
rank it received from the intellectual character of its founders, 
that its social position was at once lost in consequence of fail- 
ing to maintain its original literary splendor ; and I have 
written this chapter for the purpose of showing, as far as 
possible in so summary a manner, that, instead of declining 
in this respect, it has been steadily waxing stronger, till it now 
occupies a well-fortified position in the literature of the 
English language. That Methodism, at its origin, was driven 
from the English cathedrals and parish churches to the masses 
of the population, and even to the most degraded of those 
masses, is its boast and glory; it took this direction, and 
wrought its miracles among the multitude, there is no doubt, 
by the order of a far-seeing Providence ; but it has, neverthe- 
less, long since raised itself to a noticeable rank for general 
intelligence ; while it has never seen a day when its original 



144 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



position, as a religious movement begun and carried on by- 
gentlemen of educated genius, has not been successfully 
maintained in the persons of a never-failing line of learned 
men of more than ordinary eminence. 7 

The religious character and literary labors of English 
Methodism, however, have not been alone in giving its rank 
and power with the British public. Piety has weight chiefly 
with serious people ; and literature is a permanent influence 
only with the reading classes; but oratory, eloquence, the 
power of appeal to the masses of a population, carries every- 
body along with it without a moment's delay — without a 
particle of preparation or reflection. And oratory has been 

7 The American reader will doubtless be glad to look upon a list of the 
more valuable works of Drs. Rule and Smith, the former of whom has pub- 
lished the following : The Brand of Dominic, a History of the Inquisition, 
in 1 vol., crown octavo; Celebrated Jesuits, in^ 2 vols., ISmo. ; Mar- 
tyrs of the Reformation, a History of the Martyrdoms, Confessions and 
Sufferings, from the Dawn of the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century, 
in 1 vol., octavo ; Studies from History, in 2 vols., crown octavo ; The 
Third Crusade, 1 vol., crown octavo ; The Fall of the Greek Empire, with 
an Account of the Council of Florence, convened to unite the Latin and 
Greek Churches, 1 vol., crown octavo ; Dawn of the Reformation, with 
Events of the Reign of Pope Alexander VI., 1 vol., crown octavo ; and 
the Spirit of the Reformation, in 1 vol., crown octavo, besides numerous 
editions of works of eminence written by other authors. Dr. Smith's 
list of works shows a mind of altogether another cast. They are the 
Chronology of Genesis, 1 vol. ; Doctrine of the Cherubim, 1 vol., crown 
octavo ; Doctrine of the Pastorate, in two editions, one in one vol., crown 
octavo, the other in smaller covers ; Harmony of the Divine Dispensations, 
1 vol., crown octavo ; History of Wesleyan Methodism, in 2 vols., crown 
octavo ; Origin of Alphabetical Characters, 1 vol. ; Perilous Times, 1 vol., 
duodecimo ; Religion of Ancient Britain Historically Considered, 1 vol., 
crown octavo ; Wesleyan Polity, 1 vol. ; Wesleyan Local Preachers, 1 vol. ; 
the Patriarchal Age, 1 vol. ; the Hebrew People, 1 vol. ; and the Gentile 
Nations, 1 vol. ; and I may remark that the three last mentioned works 
are each large volumes of crown octavo. It should also be added that 
nearly all the productions of these two writers have not only been read 
and admired but republished in the United States. 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 145 

the particular glory of Methodism, from its origin ; it is a 
remarkable historic fact, from which a philosopher will derive 
a topic for patient examination, that the greatest of British 
orators for the last hundred and twenty years have been 
Wesleyan preachers. This, I know, is at first sight a start- 
ling declaration, and may seem like the language of puerile 
assumption ; but the reader will find, I think, by a careful 
investigation, that I have uttered but the sober truth. Is it 
not universally admitted that George Whitefield was the 
prince of modern eloquence ? This, according to Dr. Franklin, 
was his rank in England and in the United States ; and if 
Whitefield had any competitor, that competitor was the Rev. 
John Wesley, who was styled the "mover of men's con- 
sciences," as his fellow-laborer was called the "mover of 
men's passions." Mr. Wesley's other powers were so distin- 
guished, that his eloquence has received less attention than it 
merits ; but Dr. Southey states distinctly, in many places, 
that the sermons of Wesley were attended by greater and 
more lasting effects than those of Whitefield. These two men 
were followed also by a host of speakers in Great Britain, 
whose pulpit oratory was beyond all competition. Thomas 
Walsh was an orator, as well as a scholar of the first distinc- 
tion ; and he was surrounded and succeeded by men of his 
own order, who had no rivals in the pulpits, or in the halls of 
legislation, of their country. Then came a class of preachers 
whose representative may be seen in the burning but tem- 
pered eloquence of Joseph Benson, who, according to all 
contemporary statements, was the wonder and delight of his 
generation. Another class of Wesleyan orators is repre- 
sented to us in the clear statement, close argumentation, 
ample knowledge and illustration, and mighty utterance of 
Richard Watson, whose discourses are yet read as among 
the most able in the English language. Next to Watson 
came a whole platform of Wesleyan orators, signaled to us 
by the Rev. Drs. Bunting, Dixon and Newton, who. with 

1 



146 RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 



those of their class, held an American as w^ll as European 
reputation. Dr. Dixon is still among the living; and by his 
side there have sprang up a band of more recent preachers, 
who, as a body, maintain the full ascendency of "Wesley an 
oratory before the English public. We hare heard, on this 
side of the water, the stirring tones of the Rev. Dr. Arthur, 
who is acknowledged as one of the ablest pulpit and platform 
speakers now in Europe ; and we have seen him followed 
from city to city, and from one appointment to another, 
by crowds of admiring listeners. But Mr. Arthur, at 
home, is only one of many of his own rank, whose minis- 
trations are sought after with the greatest enthusiasm, and 
celebrated all over England. Perhaps the leading orator 
of English Wesleyanism, at the present moment, is the Rev. 
Mr. Punshon, whose style of speaking is more captivating 
than that of any other clergyman in Great Britain. 8 His 
only rival for popularity is the Rev. Mr. Spurgeon, whose 
sermons are certainly attracting an attention due only to 
genius of the highest mark ; but Spurgeon, whatever it is 

8 The power and splendor of Mr. Punshon's oratory may be inferred 
from the offer made him by the noted P. T. Barnum, whose sagacity as 
a caterer to the popular taste is not to be disputed, whatever may be 
said of him as a member of society. " Strange as it may appear, V says an 
English correspondent of an American newspaper, " your American Barnum 
has made Mr. Punshon a serious offer of £2000 a year to accompany him 
to America and give lectures under Barnum's direction and supervision. 
No one but Barnum would have the impudence to have made an approach 
to Mr, Punshon, of such an unhallowed kind. Mr. Punshon's reply con- 
sisted simply in writing 'Acts xiii. 10,' and sending it to Barnum." 
On turning to the Scriptures, the reader will find the following pertinent 
language : " Oh, full of all subtlety and mischief, thou child of the devil, 
thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right 
ways of the Lord?" The incident shows, however, that in the eyes of 
this showman, who has manifested great skill in his operations, Mr. 
Punshon is at least among the most popular, if it does not indicate that 
he is the most popular, of British orators at the present moment. 



RANK AND POWER OF ENGLISH METHODISM. 147 

which calls such multitudes to hear him, is not an orator ; 
while Punshon is renowned, not onlyfor the immense gather- 
ings summoned together by his popularity, but for nearly 
every quality that enters into the composition of a beautiful 
and powerful public speaker. The truth of it is, in a word, 
that from Punshon all the way back to Whitefield, from 
George Smith to John Wesley, through more than a full 
century of the better part of* the history of Great Britain, 
English Methodism has recommended itself to the masses of 
the population, and maintained its original eminence in the 
judgment of the higher classes, by its religious character, 
by its literary achievements, and by a line of orators more 
illustrious than can be produced from the annals of any simi- 
lar community, since the death of Luther. And the result of 
it all is, that its half million of industrious, pious, energetic 
membership, and with the national church disintegrating and 
falling to ruin all around it, the rank and power of Methodism 
in England are really equal, though nominally holding a 
second place, and will soon be more than equal, to the position 
and influence of any religious denomination, either in Eng- 
land, or on the eastern shores of the Atlantic. 



CHAPTER IV. 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

The first seeds of Methodism iu America were scattered 
by the two Wesleys, and by that prince of modern pulpit 
orators, George Whitefield ; and the seed sprang up, bearing 
in good time no little fruit. But these men, and the bound- 
less excitement produced by them among the people of the 
new world, passed away ; their places were left vacant ; the 
cold and motionless orthodoxy of the day chilled the enthu- 
siasm of the little bands of Methodists which had started up 
in different localities ; and the cause approached a dissolution 
almost in the hour of its origin. The loose habits of religious 
thinking, and the martial as well as worldly spirit entailed by 
the Revolutionary struggle, continued and increased the diffi- 
culty of keeping American Methodism alive, till a more genial 
influence should dawn upon it. It did survive, however ; and 
the Rev. Thomas Coke, LL.D., an English gentleman of for- 
tune and of high literary position, was sent by Mr. Wesley to 
superintend the work of resuscitating and spreading Methodism 
in the young republic. The Rev. Francis Asbury was asso- 
ciated with Dr. Coke in this great undertaking ; and it was 
immediately discovered that the junior superintendent pos- 
sessed, not only the qualities fitting him for his post of duty, 
but a remarkable genius for it. He surpassed, in fact, his 
colleague in every department of their labor ; but they worked 
together with surprising success ; they traveled, and preached, 
and gathered societies in every quarter and section of the 
country ; they made their mission to be felt among all classes 
of our citizens ; their trumpet notes were heard from the At« 

148 



BANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 149 

lantic seaboard over the Blue and Alleghany mountains, and 
far into the depths of the endless and unbroken forest of the 
great interior ; they were listened to with respect by the 
leading men, and with rapt interest by the humbler populace, 
of every region ; and we find them, not long after their pro- 
motion to this joint business, introducing their cause to the 
favorable attention of the first officers of the Federal Govern- 
ment, and receiving the approbation and blessing, from his 
own hand, of the Father of his Country. 

This, certainly, was a very good beginning ; but it is not to 
be supposed that American Methodism enjoyed the same 
rank, or exerted the same power, in the hands of all its repre- 
sentatives. The truth of it is, that, in this country as in 
England, it grew more rapidly than the ability of the denomi- 
nation to furnish just such representatives as its character 
and wants demanded. There was a call for its heralds con- 
stantly coming to its superintending bishops, and that grow- 
ing every hour in earnestness and volume, from every quarter 
of the land ; it waxed more and more intense and unmanage- 
able by every advance effected in the general enterprise ; every 
revival, every sermon, added to its force ; and the consequence 
was, that, when the people could not find men educated ex- 
pressly for the pulpit by a long course of college training, 
they would not wait for them to rise up out of the work 
itself, nor yet be denied the help of those, who, in any manner, 
could point them the way to heaven. It would be a very 
great mistake, however, to set these early ministers of Ameri- 
can Methodism down as a class of ignorant men, without any 
qualifications for their exalted work. The very opposite of 
this is the simple fact. They were not, as a general thing, 
skilled in those departments of human learning lying outside 
of the system of practical theology ; but within this particu- 
lar field, they were remarkable for their ability and informa- 
tion ; they were adepts, also, in the knowledge of human 
nature ; and their success in preaching a new set of theologi- 



150 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

cal opinions, and in brushing away the established opinions 
of the regions which they undertook to cultivate, is a suffi- 
cient demonstration of their superiority, in every essential 
element of a ministerial preparation, to the clergy of the 
older denominations. If called upon to deliver scientific 
lectures, or pronounce orations in which style is of more 
consequence than truth, or figure in any way as merely lite- 
ary characters, they would have been found deficient ; and 
consequently they were habitually overlooked, or unfelt, in 
the general purposes of social life ; but, in their own calling 
of preaching the gospel, of stating and defending their theo- 
logical doctrines, of reaching and rousing the slumbering 
energies of the moral nature, thay had no equals. " Classical 
learning," says Judge McLean " is of great value, and should 
be acquired, if practicable, by every individual who aims at 
a professional life. But this learning does not qualify an 
individual for the high duties of the pulpit, or the bar. 
There must be a deeper knowledge, which can only be at- 
tained by much reading and mature reflection. An indi- 
vidual who is brought in contact with men, and whose aim it 
is to influence them, must become acquainted with the sym- 
pathies of human nature ; and he must possess those sym- 
pathies in a high degree, or his efforts will be in vain. How 
often have we seen men in the pulpit, with great zeal, and 
in a vociferous manner, speak for hours without producing 
any other effect than weariness on their hearers. Such a 
speaker, however zealous, is a stranger to those gushing 
emotions of the heart, which, with an electric effect, are 
imparted to the auditory. He may be instructive ; he may 
string his sentences together, and embody all the figures of 
rhetoric; but he can never reach and overcome the citadel 
of the heart; and, unless he can do this, he can never become 
a successful instrument of reform." The learned author of 
these remarks is drawing the contrast, not by accident but 
design, between the college-bred ministers of the older sect? 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 151 

and the self-made ministry of Methodism in the early times ; 
he is himself a noble representative of those times; he has 
enjoyed, too, the singular advantage, not only of comparing 
the clergy of all the different denominations of this country on 
the largest scale, but the clergy of at least two generations ; 
and he distinctly gives the preference, for all the qualities 
of an efficient discharge of their proper duties, to the Meth- 
odist ministry over every other of his native land. After giv- 
ing them as a class this eulogy, he mentions several eminent 
examples. He says of the Rev. John Collins, a name almost 
wholly unknown to American society at large, that he pos- 
sessed, in a most eminent degree, nearly all the qualities of 
head and heart essential to a powerful and successful speaker ; 
and, though a most cautious writer, whose sentences seem to 
come from him as if they had been written on the bench, he 
proceeds so far as to place the Rev. William McKendree, 
another name not known in the literary or scientific circles 
of the United States, at the head of American pulpit orators 
during the generation that has just passed away. "Bishop 
McKendree," he says, " was not a classical scholar ; and yet 
there has not appeared in the Methodist connection a finer 
model as a preacher. He was eloquent in the true sense of 
the term. Few men ever filled the pulpit with greater dig- 
nity and usefulness ; and the beautiful simplicity of his ser- 
mons was, perhaps, unequaled in our country? 1 

This is high eulogy to be pronounced upon a man who was 
scarcely recognized as an orator at all outside of his own 
denomination ; and it may be thought that the verdict of the 
judge, in this case, was influenced in favor of the eloquent 
bishop by the fact, that both were distinguished Methodists. 
The truth doubtless is, however, that the judgment is less 
favorable from this very circumstance ; for every reader of 

i Copied for the author from Zion's Herald of March 20, 1850, by F. 
Rand, Esq. 



152 RiNK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

genuine sensibility will see how unwelcome it must be to a 
truly modest man, and to every person of any pretensions in 
the world, to claim for his own friends what they really 
merit ; and the fear of being accused of exaggeration must 
have contributed an additional motive for an excess, not of 
panegyric, but of moderation. Bishop McKendree was, 
without contradiction, one of the great pulpit orators of his 
generation ; and the class of our early preachers, at the head 
of which he stood, could furnish in Jesse Lee, in Freeborn 
Garretson, in the Rev. Nathan Bangs, D.D., and in their 
associates, a much abler ministry, for all the legitimate pur- 
poses of the pulpit, than could have been selected from the 
contemporaneous churches of the continent. 8 

Methodism, expressed in the form of a general proposition, 
is a universal salvation provided for the people, and addressed 
directly to them. There is nothing limited, narrow, or par- 
tial in it. It calls upon every class of men, from the prince 
to the humblest peasant, to listen and believe. There is no 
condition of moral character, either so high, or so abject, as to 

2 Judge McLean, in his contrast of the educated clergy and the self- 
made itinerants of his younger days, says : " Facts will show how much 
many of these men, in vigorous eloquence and power, surpass those who 
have passed through college. Every man must make himself; the college 
cannot do this for him. Some who had very few advantages in early life, 
may be most emphatically said to be great men." These great men were 
the traveling preachers of Methodism, at that period of its history in this 
country, when it is now sometimes said Methodism was represented and 
proclaimed by bands of unlettered and ignorant itinerants. Ignorant or 
learned, they shook the country and took possession of it ; and if the 
ancestral churches of this land can derive any consolation from the idea, 
that they were outdone on the field of battle by a set of raw and weak 
invaders, they ought to be welcome to it. When Colonel Hayne was 
accused of having been put to flight by his great antagonist in the Senate 
of the United States, his boastful reply was, that "it took Daniel Webster 
to do it." The day may come when the ancestral theology of this country 
will be glad to look upon American Methodism as having always presented 
similar claims to its respect ! 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 153 

be beyond the limit of its appeal. That appeal, too, is urgent. 
Everything depends upon it. Not only the real blessings of 
the present state, but the glorious enjoyments of immortality, 
are suspended upon the decision of a moment. The minister 
comes to offer eternal life to every man who will consent to 
take it. A single refusal may seal the destiny of an undying 
creature for eternity. Now is the accepted time ; now is the 
day of salvation ; and there must be no procrastination. This 
is Methodism ; this is the message which its heralds brought 
to the population of this country ; and it is not to be won- 
dered at, that it creates an ardor, a power, an eloquence 
unknown to those denominations, which make the salvation 
of a soul to depend on the decrees of God, whose plan of 
mercy includes a small but definite number of the race, to 
which all the preaching in the world cannot add a solitary 
individual. It is not at all singular, therefore, that Methodism 
should have surpassed all competition in the high order of its 
pulpit eloquence. Not only were its early preachers, almost 
without exception, far beyond the common level of their 
profession in this respect, but their successors, as a body, 
have seldom had their rivals. Has any American sect pro- 
duced, I will not say an occasional orator, but such a cata- 
logue of orators as is found in the record of such names as 
John Summerfield, John N. Maffitt, Willbur Fisk, George 
Cookman, Henry B. Bascom, and others of their class, who, 
in their day, were the acknowledged princes of the pulpit 
eloquence of this country? It is freshly recollected by many 
of the living, that there was no audience-room in the land a 
quarter large enough for either of these distinguished speak- 
ers, when it was known over any breadth of territory that 
they were going to preach. We, of this day, think it notic- 
able if such a man as Henry Ward Beecher can fill a house 
holding three or four thousand people, when it is settled and 
well known, over all the land and for a year together, just 

when and where he is to speak. There is certainly a measure 

7* 



154 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

of fame in this fact ; and it would be entirely ungenerous not 
to award the gentleman the full merit of it ; but Avhat is that 
fame, after all, compared with that of Summerfield or of Bas- 
com, who, with half a day's notice of an appointment to 
preach, in any city of the nation, would call out from three 
to five or six times as many people as could be crowded into 
the largest assembly-rooms to be had on such occasions. 
Summerfield, it is well known, drew the largest and selectest 
audiences ever seen in the cities visited by him since the days 
of Whitefield. Citizens of the southern and western States 
have told me, also, of the whole adult population of large dis- 
tricts of country, more than all the meeting-houses within 
miles of the spot could hold, going out and filling all the 
roads on the way to the place, where they were to listen to 
the eloquence of Bascom. The same boundless power over 
the masses belonged to John Newland Mafntt. Once, in the 
city of Boston, the writer of this gave out an appointment 
for Mr. Mafntt, at the close of the morning service, that he 
would preach that afternoon and evening in one of the larg- 
est audience rooms in the capital of Massachusetts. It had 
not been known a moment before to the public that he was 
anywhere within the neighborhood of Boston. The after- 
noon and evening came ; a sea-coast storm of wind and rain 
had set in, soon after the morning hour ; and before the 
second service of the day began, it rained in torrents, and 
continued to rain more and more copiously from that time 
through the night. The tempest was so black with cloud, 
and fog, and rain, that the gas-lights had to be lit in the 
afternoon to enable the audience to find their seats. There 
was not another man in Boston, nor in Massachusetts, except- 
ing only Daniel Webster, who could have called out a hun- 
dred gentlemen under circumstances so utterly unpropitious. 
Mr. Maffitt's audiences, however, both afternoon and even- 
ing, made up of about the usual proportions of the sexes, 
were as brilliant as can be imagined. The place was the old 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 155 

Federal street theatre ; it was packed from pit to dome with 
the elite of Boston ; not only were all the seats, but the aisles 
and corners were densely crowded, hundreds of ladies being 
obliged to stand, below and in all the four galleries, because 
the whole living mass was so wedged in that no gentleman 
could move out of his place to make a vacancy ; the more 
venturesome, crowded more and more by those pushing for- 
ward from the doors, clung to the front railings of the gal- 
leries, where they seemed to hang like bees when swarming ; 
and when the preacher arose to lead the first hymn, and the 
full head of gas was poured on the scene, it was both curi- 
ous and exhilarating to behold what multitudes of human 
beings, gathered by so brief a notice, could be so crammed 
together. The next morning, I was told by the sexton, that, 
though all the ladies and most of the gentlemen were com- 
pelled to come in carriages, nearly as many arrived and rode 
away, after the house was full, as had been admitted. This, 
however, was the universal experience of Mr. Maffitt ; for it 
was at this time, only a few days before this visit to Boston, 
that the street in New York on which stood the church in 
which he had been advertised to preach, had been so blocked 
by the masses of carriages and foot passengers striving to 
make their way to the spot, that it had to be cleared by the 
help of the municipal authorities. 

There is no question, indeed, that Methodism has been fore- 
most of all the American denominations in the production of 
popular preachers ; its early history in this country was so 
marked by the number of its brilliant pulpit orators as to 
open a new era of popular eloquence on this continent ; and 
their style and manner, including their extemporaneous 
method, have so taken possession of the public mind, that all 
classes of public speakers, excepting only the clergy of some 
small religious bodies, have been compelled by the pressure 
of the general taste to follow their example. But it may be 
thought, if this notice of "Wesleyan oratory should here close 



156 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



with an allusion to the dead, that the inheritance of this gift 
has been lost to the representatives of the Methodism of the 
present generation. This, nevertheless, is not the truth. 
American Methodism, it is admitted, has at this moment no 
Maffitt, no Summerfield, no Bascom; it has no man precisely 
equal to George Cookman, and Willbur Fisk ; but it has a 
score of preachers who can preach more ably (if not as elo- 
quently) than either of the three great orators I have men- 
tioned. Let me build for the reader a Methodist platform ; 
let me seat upon it the Rev. Dre. Thomas H. Stockton, John 
M'Clintock, Edward Thomson, George F. Pierce, William 
A. Smith, Joseph Cross, Edward Sehon, Abel Stevens, 
William H. Milburn, Jesse T. Peck, Randolph S. Foster, and 
John P. Durbin. What reader, I ask, will build another 
platform, and place upon it an equal number of American 
clergymen, selected from no one denomination, but from the 
leading denominations of the country, with an expectation 
of gaining credit by such competition ? Let the two plat- 
forms be located, side by side, in some crystal palace, or 
Niblo garden; give the two a question of any character, 
civil, social, or religious, to be bandied in debate between 
them ; or call upon them each to represent itself in full by 
addressing an audience of fifteen or twenty thousand in suc- 
cessive speeches. I should be willing for myself, whatever 
might be the test, or whatever twelve American clergymen 
might be selected for the opposition, to witness the proceed- 
ings and abide by the result. If there are in this country 
twelve preachers, or twelve platform speakers, not members 
of the Methodist denomination, which could enjoy a com- 
parison or a contest with the twelve I have here presented, 
I confess myself so uninformed as not to know them. 

And yet, there is a distinct body of Methodist clergymen, 
to no one of whom have I alluded, who, as a whole, would 
maintain an equally respectable rank on the platform, or in 
the pulpit. I refer to the Rev. Drs. Thomas A. Morris, 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 157 



Edmund S. Janes, Levi Scott, Osinan C. Baker, Mathew 
Simpson, and Edward R. Ames, who are known as the 
Methodist bench of bishops. This bench is not selected 
mainly on the basis of great preaching abilities ; but it hap- 
pens that the existing episcopal body, as a body, is remark- 
ably eminent for its oratorical genius. Bishop Baker's 
strength is in the composition, rather than in the delivery, of 
whatever he addresses to the public. Bishop Morris, whether 
he writes, or speaks without writing, is a model of clear, 
simple, direct, cogent, and yet unimpassioned eloquence. 
Bishop Scott is a logical preacher ; but his logic is always all 
on fire w T ith feeling ; and his discourses are oftentimes posi- 
tively overwhelming. Bishop Janes is plain, neat, and 
beautiful, w T ith a thought in every emotion, and an emotion 
in every thought — clear as sunlight in the arrangement of 
his subject — transparent and as pure as the heavens in his 
diction — easy, fluent, graceful, and yet powerful in delivery 
— the Summerfield of the present generation. Bishop Simp- 
son is an impassioned speaker ; his subject is always grand, 
or sublime, and vast in its bearings and application ; his 
arrangement is climacteric, the discourse all the while grow- 
ing deeper, and broader, and loftier, and at the same time 
warmer and mightier, till it closes with bursts of power like 
successive peals of heavy ordnance ; and he seldom sits down 
without leaving his audience full of interesting ideas, capti- 
vated with the charms of voice and manner, softened to tears 
by the irresistible and all-embracing sympathies of the 
preacher, and firmly resolved from that hour to live for God 
and immortality. Bishop Ames, last but not least of this list 
of orators, has so many sides to his genius that it is not easy 
to comprehend him in a sentence. He is naturally a states- 
man. Had he given himself to civil affairs, he must certainly 
have reached a very great eminence among the leading 
spirits of our country. He has all the penetration, forecast 
and circumspection requisite for the most responsible posi- 



158 RANK AND POAVER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

tions. He excels in financial talent ; and he would have 
known, as the ruler of a state, to develop the resources of 
his people by the arts of peace, or to make sudden and legi- 
timate accumulations of capital for the emergencies of war. 
He would have been popular as well as able in civil life ; for 
his address is as easy as his judgment is profound. As an 
orator, he would have belonged, as he now belongs, to the 
school of Webster, rather than to that of Patrick Henry. 
Being of a bilious temperament, and requiring a great deal 
of motive to call him fully out, he delivers many ordinary 
discourses to one effort worthy of his power ; and his hearers 
are as often tempted to resent his apparent apathy as to 
admire the strength in reserve which they cannot fail to see; 
but when he is called out — when he falls upon an occasion 
which demands him to the uttermost — he always justifies his 
title to the nom de guerre, given him by his clerical comrades 
in early life, of being the Lion of the West. A distinguished 
clergyman of Great Britain, who visited the leading evange- 
lical churches of this country as a soliciting agent for a 
European charity, after spending a year or two in the United 
States, remarked in my hearing just prior to his departure, 
that he had had the pleasure of listening to nearly every one 
of our most celebrated American preachers, and that the 
ablest sermon he had heard, as well as the ablest he had ever 
heard, was delivered by Bishop Ames at an annual conference 
of his denomination. It is not to be supposed, however, that 
the preference of a single critic is to decide a question of 
comparative merit among men of such eminent and varied 
genius ; there are causes enough existing in the peculiarities 
of every individual, as well as in the surroundings of the 
moment, to give him an impression which might not be given 
to another, and which he himself might not be in a condition 
to receive at any other time ; but, with all this allowance, it 
is not too much to say, that this episcopal bench of Metho- 
dism in America can furnish as powerful and splendid speci- 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 159 



mens of pulpit oratory as are to be listened to at this day 
on either side of the Atlantic ; and yet, reader, if you will 
still follow me with credence — and I have studied moderation 
in my judgments — the facile princeps of the Methodist 
pulpit in the United States, who, for all the qualities of a 
masterly sermonizer, stood at the head of the sacred elo- 
quence of American Methodism, was a gentleman to whom 
I have not yet alluded — the Rev. Dr. Olin — the Demosthenes 
of his denomination. 

Of the College of Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, the Rev. Joshua Soule, D.D., is the senior. 
He was born at Bristol, Maine, August-1, 1781, and is in the 
79th year of his age. He entered the travelling connection 
in the eighteenth year of his age, and has been effective 
through an unbroken period of sixty-one years. His com- 
manding talents secured for him a prominent position in the 
Church, and in 1816 he was elected book agent at New 
York, and editor of the "Methodist Magazine." He con- 
tinued in this relation until 1824, when he was elected bishop, 
and is at this time the oldest of all the bishops in the 
Church, North or South. ~No bishop since the days of Asbury 
has been more tireless in his labors and travels. In 1 842, he was 
appointed delegate to the British Wesleyan connection ; and 
in company with Dr. Sargent, of Baltimore, represented 
the Methodist Episcopal Church in the "Wesleyan Conference 
in 1842. In the division of the Church in 1844, he identified 
himself with the southern section, and hence his labors since 
that time have been in the southern States. Bishop Soule has 
a reputation as wide as the American Union. As a presiding 
officer, he has but few equals, and none that can possibly 
command greater respect. 

The second in the Board of Bishops of the Church, South, 
is James Osgood Andrews, D.D., whose connection with the 
slavery question constituted the basis of the unhappy divi- 
sion of the Church above alluded to. He was born in Geor- 
gia in 1794, and is at present sixty-six years of age. He entered 



160 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



the South Carolina Conference in 1813. His letters, contain- 
ing accounts of his episcopal tours in Texas and California, 
are full of interest. Possessed of great energy, indepen- 
dence, and originality of thought, admirable powers of 
pulpit eloquence and administrative talent, he has earned a 
wide reputation. 

John Early, D.D., was born in Virginia, in 1785. He was 
for many years secretary of the Virginia Conference, and for a 
long time represented the same as a delegate in the General 
Conference. In 1846, he was elected book agent of the pub- 
lishing house of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
which position he occupied until his election to the episco- 
pacy, in 1854. He has preached as presiding elder a greater 
number of years, and been a delegate in general conference 
more frequently, perhaps, than any other preacher now living. 
Bishop Early is a revivalist, and the fruits of his morning 
prayer meetings in the conference room, and the glorious 
results of his pulpit labors bear witness to the fact. 

Robert Payne, D.D., was born in Tennessee, and entered 
the Tennessee Conference in 1819. In 1830, he was elected 
President of La Grange College, Alabama, which position 
he held with distinguished credit as a scholar, until he was 
called to the episcopacy in 1846. His abilities as a preacher 
are of a high order. As a conference officer he is deservedly 
popular. 

George F. Pierce, D.D., was born in Georgia, where he 
entered the ministry in early life. He graduated at Franklin 
College, and was for several years President of Emory Col- 
lege, Georgia. In 1846, he was called from this post to the 
episcopacy, and has proven a most efficient officer of the 
Church. His visit to Newark, New Jersey, to assist in the 
dedication of the Broad street Church, in connection with 
Bishops Janes and Simpson, was of great interest, and his 
eloquent sermon on that occasion will long be remembered 
by those who were present. 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 161 

Hubbard H. Kavanaugh, D.D., was bom in Kentucky, 
and entered the travelling connection in that State. His 
discourses are marked by purity of sentiment, felicity of ex- 
pression, beauty and force of illustration, and a most refresh- 
ing unction. His travels among the Indians on the frontiers, 
and in California and Oregon, have been of great service to 
the Church, of which he is an honored bishop. 

The rank and power of Methodism in the United States 
are not to be found, however, in its powerful and brilliant 
oratory only. Its eloquence alone would have been sufficient, 
doubtless, to give it a high position in the social world. 
But its character has been made, and is now to be discov- 
ered, equally at least in the productions of its pen. The pen 
is the mightiest of human instruments ; its work is broader 
and yet deeper than that of the tongue ; and its results 
remain when every other evidence of human genius, and of 
human labor, has vanished into the thin air, or crumbled 
back to dust. Nor has American Methodism been insensible 
of its power. The first effort of Methodism in this country, 
as in all countries, was of course to gather up a people by its 
preaching, who might afterward receive and read its books. 
The books, however, in due time came. Methodism, never- 
theless, is not an association formed for the purpose of mak- 
ing and gathering up observations upon the various agencies, 
moral, religious, or social, by which it is surrounded. It 
came not to record the doings of other bodies. It came, not 
to write, but to do something worthy of being written down 
for the benefit of others ; its literary productions, therefore, 
are confined almost entirely to the legitimate development 
of its own great mission ; and yet that mission, since the 
time when it could most fitly employ the pen, has set so 
many hands to paper, that American Methodism has always 
made a respectable show of writers, and now teems with 
literary works of a high order in nearly every department of 
human knowledge. It is a singular fact, strikingly in con- 



162 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

traduction to the general charge of illiteracy raised against 
the first heralds of Methodism in the United States, that our 
early history abounds with hooks written by these men. To 
say nothing of our original superintendent, who was a Doe- 
tor of Laws and a gentleman of fine scholarship, look at 
Asbury, and Lee, who, while traveling from one end of the 
continent to the other, wrote those volumes which still 
remain upon our shelves. Valentine Cook, according to the 
sufficient testimony of Bishop Morris, was a splendid scholar, 
as well as an orator of the first order. Beauchamp was 
another intellectual giant; he was a profound dialectician 
and philosopher, though known to the world only as a fear- 
Jess itinerant and a preacher of great popularity ; and his 
writings, for the most part still in manuscript, because he 
•vvas too busy to perfect them and too prudent to publish 
them unrevised, have been declared by Bishop Soule, a kin- 
dred character, to be worthy of the genius of a philosopher 
of the classic ages. 

In this country, as- in Europe, it has often happened that 
the most remarkable scholarship has occurred among those 
humble workers in the field of Methodism, who were known 
to their contemporaries, not as men of learning at all, but 
as men of action. Sometimes the erudition of an obscure 
individual, entirely unrecognized until brought out of his 
obscurity by an accident, has finally met its reward within 
the bosom of the denomination, but has not gone out into 
the surrounding world, or has not found its place in the 
annals of his times. I will give a single illustration of this 
general fact. Many years ago, when connected with a literary 
institution in New England, at a hotel where I chanced to 
stop for dinner, I heard some of the servants talking largely 
of their learned Irishman, who, it appeared, was the groom 
of the establishment. They said much about his knowledge 
of the languages. Half-thinking it might be one of the shallow 
marvels of this class of people, and yet having nothing better 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 163 

for the moment than to look after it a little, I proceeded to 
inquire out the hero of this servile colloquy. He was an 
Irishman of more than forty years of age. He had a pile of 
books stowed away in an empty manger ; and I discovered 
some of the rarer of the Greek and Latin classics among 
them. He read to me from both languages till I was satisfied 
of his attainments; and I at once procured his release from 
his low occupation, offering him, at the same time, a situation 
in the seminary as teacher of ancient languages. He imme- 
diately astonished the students with his readiness and lear- 
ning. They filled the place and the surrounding country 
with reports of his vast accomplishments. Not long after 
his arrival, I had full proof of his quality myself. We had 
entered into an arrangement to read together and compare 
the Old Testament Scriptures in Greek and Hebrew. He 
held the Hebrew, I the Greek ; and thus we took notes of 
the various readings. On the day referred to, I paused a 
moment to consider the peculiar signification of a word. 
At other times he had waited for me, but now I was soon 
recalled from my contemplation by the tones of his voice. 
He was reading ; he was reading Greek, though still holding 
the Hebrew Bible in his hand ; and I soon perceived, to my 
astonishment, that he was translating Hebrew into Greek, in 
which he succeeded so admirably, that his translation would 
frequently be, for whole passages together, almost word for 
word like the version which I held in my hand. On being 
arrested, he smiled and said he could " turn it the other way 
as well." So, on our exchanging books, he translated the Sep- 
tuagint into Hebrew with astonishing correctness. He next 
translated both the Greek and Hebrew, first into Latin, I fol- 
lowing after him with the Vulgate in my hand, then into 
French, then into Italian, then into Spanish, and lastly into 
Gaelic, where I could no longer track him. He said he could 
proceed in the same manner with several other languages, 
ancient and modern, but, as he had already gone beyond my 



164: "3ANK AND POWEK OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

reach, I was obliged to take his word for it without further 
verification. He spoke the Latin fluently, as well as most or 
all of the dialects of modem Europe except the German, 
which he thought was very well characterized by Charles the 
Twelfth, who said it was fit only to be talked to cattle. In 
hearing the recitations of his classes, if a pupil asked the 
meaning of a word, he would launch out into such a sea of 
references to the classics where the word was used, that the 
inquirer was oftentimes more astonished than instructed. 
In making his classical citations, which would run up from 
half a dozen to twenty-five or thirty at a time, he would 
always give the context of the places cited in the original 
language, and generally would give the book, chapter and 
page of the editions which he read. He was, in a word, the 
most thoroughly educated classical scholar, as I think, on this 
continent ; I do not believe, indeed, that either Porson or 
Bentley were capable of the feats of scholarship performed 
by him ; and yet, he toiled for years as an unknown profes- 
sor in a denominational institution, known at most only 
among the people of his religious choice, for whom he was 
willing to labor without the rewards of fame or the honors 
of ambition. His name was Andrew Walsh. 

Similar cases of great scholarship in the humbler walks of 
Methodism have come under my personal observation in 
other places. Some years after the time of the incidents just 
narrated, there was a young man, not more than twenty-one 
or two years of age, employed in the Methodist High School 
for boys in the city of Cincinnati, who, considering his youth, 
was a character still more remarkable than Mr. Walsh. He was 
a fine English scholar ; he could also read and speak with 
native ease and fluency the leading European languages ; he 
had made himself wonderfully familiar with the literatures of 
those languages ; and he could sustain any critical opinion 
he might advance by any quantity of apt quotations from the 
modern European classics, now reciting Schiller, or Goethe, 



BANK AND POWEB OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 165 

orKlopstock like a literary German, next pouring out passage 
after passage from Petrarch or Dante as if he had spent a 
long life in perusing the Tuscan poets, then inundating his 
listeners with successive floods from the Castilian fountains, 
like an enthusiastic Spaniard, and so ranging through the 
languages and literatures of the refined nations of Europe, 
from London to Leipsic, from Leipsic to Rome, from Rome 
to modern Athens, and from one period of the histories of 
these various literatures to another, as if he had given sixty 
or seventy years to the study of the authorities relied upon 
by Hallam and Sismondi. He read the Greek and Latin 
classics with great readiness and beauty ; and he spoke the 
Latin tongue so much more correctly than the most learned 
professors of the city, that, though a Methodist and a teacher 
in a Methodist institution, he was employed to teach the 
priesthood connected with the Roman Catholic Cathedral of 
Cincinnati in the art of Latin conversation. He subsequently 
went to Europe to indulge his appetite for study; and there 
he still remains, I believe, occupying his time in teaching, and 
in brushing the dust of centuries from the libraries of the 
great literary capitals. The yotmg man's name is Baker; 
and his age is now (1859) somewhat less than forty. 

It will not serve the restricted limits of this chapter, how- 
ever, to deal further in these examples of remarkable scholar- 
ship which have all the while existed in the bosom of the 
Methodist denomination ; it is difficult, indeed, to pass over 
in silence several others equally rare and wonderful ; but it 
will be necessary from this point to reduce the literary men 
of American Methodism into classes, naming, it may be, a 
specimen of each class as the representative of his fellows. 
There is now living, for instance, the Rev. Charles Elliott, 
D.D., LL.D., President of the Iowa "Wesleyan University, 
whose speciality is patristic literature, and who, in this 
department, has no equal in this country, though he stands 



a 66 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

at the head of quite a school of younger men who are walk- 
ing in. his footsteps. His Delineation of Romanism, a work 
published in the United States and republished in Great 
Britain, has been pronounced, on both sides of the Atlantic, 
the most learned and able portraiture of Popery, and the 
best argument agafinst its absurdities, since the days of the 
great Protestant struggle carried on by Selden, Usher, 
Grotius, and their insular and continental fellow-combatants. 
His time has not been entirely devoted to this field of study. 
He has written many other volumes of vast learning, among 
which may be mentioned his Sinfulness of American Slavery, 
in which he exhibits his minute and deep scholarship in the 
civil and canon law of classical and ecclesiastical Rome, 
quoting the Corpus Juris Canonici, as well as the Pandects 
and Novels of Justinian, as familiarly as he would his cate- 
chism. He has owned for years, and has with great diligence 
perused and studied, the leading authorities cited by Gibbon 
in his history of the Decline and Fall of Rome ; and he is the 
only man in this country who would be capable, at this 
moment, of reviewing critically that great performance, and 
of pointing out the places where its author's skepticism caused 
him to twist his authorities to the prejudice or dishonor of 
Christianity. He is so full of this kind of lore, that he can 
scarcely write a newspaper article, or get warm in conversa- 
tion, without betraying the depth and breadth of his know- 
ledge in this department. But his information is abundant 
in every other field of learning. I was once with him in his 
own garden ; and I asked him the name of a tree near which 
we were standing. He at once gave me its common name, 
then the Latin name, and from this he proceeded to " talk of 
trees " not only like a Solomon, but as if he had done nothing 
in his day but to study all the standards in botany from 
Linnaeus to the last of the modern school-books. He is a man 
who has mastered the circle of human knowledge, in the samo 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 167 

sense as the eulogium is applied to such characters as Milraan 
and Guizot of Europe, but for whom no suitable comparison 
can be found among the scholars of this country. His forte, 
however, is his knowledge of the Greek and Latin fathers, 
and of the great Roman authors, ecclesiastical, civil, and 
historical, from the era of the rise of Popery to the fall of the 
Roman empire. But with all his erudition, he is little known 
beyond the limits of American Methodism, the working of 
which has hitherto been so centripetal, that it has absorbed 
the abilities it has produced more than it can do, or ought to 
do, in future. 

At the head of a large class of metaphysical minds, which 
have risen up within the pale of the Methodism of this coun- 
try, stands the name of the Rev. Stephen Olin, D.D., LL.D., 
late President of the Wesleyan University, at Middletown, 
Connecticut, whose reading in mental and moral science was 
nearly universal, and whose abilities were equal to his learn- 
ing. Dr. Olin was a very large, heavy man, wuth a head too 
massive to preserve the proportions of his body. In college, 
he was noted for his strength of mind and for his incessant 
application. After completing his university course, he 
became a general reader, as if he wished to store his mind 
with all kinds of useful knowledge ; but his principal delight 
was metaphysics. As this part of his life has not been ade- 
quately written, I am compelled to write what is essential to 
this subject from recollection. Many years ago, he came to 
my residence on a visit to the place where I then resided, 
and found me looking into Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. 
" I have read that work, too," he said in his humble and 
quiet manner ; and he commenced at that point and gave me 
a synopsis (at my request) of his reading in these authors. 
He told me that he had examined carefully all the leading 
writers in this branch of study, from Plato to the latest of 
the German and French writers ; he said that he had long 



168 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



contemplated a survey of the history of philosophy to be 
written on a new plan and comprised within the compass of 
four or five octavo volumes ; but his health had entirely 
broken down ; and he could attempt nothing, he added, save 
the duties of the University, and an occasional sermon, or a 
lecture to his students. By mental constitution, by his habits 
of thinking, and by the better part of his education, he was 
the fittest man ever raised up by American Methodism for 
the preparation of standard works, not only in the history of 
metaphysical speculation, but in the practical departments 
of intellectual and moral science. He maintained that the 
great lack of the theology of Methodism was tfee reduction 
of its tenets to a scientific system ; he was anxious to see 
that w T ork attempted by some one competent to its execu- 
tion ; and, when urged to undertake the great enterprise 
himself, he replied with a deep sigh, that that, too, had been 
one of the literary projects of his early years, but that all 
projects had been sw^ept away by the utter failure of his con- 
stitution. Though he never undertook the development of 
any of his favorite ideas, for which he had spent a lifetime 
in the most vigorous and extensive preparation, he certainly 
made himself, as I believe, the best-read as he was by nature 
the profoundest metaphysician of this country. What he 
did write, though mainly upon other subjects, is a sufficient 
proof of this declaration. His published sermons, while they 
are everywhere marked by their evangelical character, and 
are warm with apostolic fervor, are always based on some 
leading idea, some philosophical principle, which the writer 
develops in a most scientific manner. In all these discourses, 
also, like a true philosopher, he advances from the known to 
the unknown, from the theoretical to the practical, from the 
general to the special, closing with the application of what 
had been thoroughly argued and established, or recognized 
as intuitional, in the strictest logical order. Intuition, indeed, 



BANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 169 



was a distinguishiDg trait of his extemporaneous addresses, 
and hence of his intellect itself : and his glances were so 
quick, and the weight of remark in passing from one great 
topic to another so momentous, that he seemed to 

" Leap like the live thunder " 

from thought to thought ; but he showed, in his written per- 
formance, that patience of argumentation which is the com- 
plementing power to intuition in the mind of a genuine phi- 
losopher. To catch at abstract truths with the rapidity of 
lightning, and then to elaborate and verify them with the 
utmost carefulness of science, were the leading intellectual 
chacteristics of this great man. He wrote nothing without 
a manifestation of this twofold excellence, his books of travel 
being a sort of compendious statement of the deductions of a 
philosophical mind from facts patiently examined, all of which 
are made afterward to result in general ideas and principles. 
He was the metaphysician of American Methodism ; but he 
was not alone ; for in the same class must be recorded the 
names of the Rev. Timothy Merritt, the Rev. John P. Dur- 
bin, D.D., the Rev. Israel Chamberlayne, D.D., the Rev. 
John Dempster, D.D., the Rev. H. M. Johnson, D.D., the 
Rev. Charles K. True, DJX, of the northern States, and 
those of Ignatius, A. Few, LL.D., and Augustus B. Long- 
street, LL.D., of the southren wing of the denomination in 
this country. Perhaps a score of respectable metaphysical 
thinkers might be added to this list — of writers ranking for 
intellect with such men as the English Morrell and the Jouf- 
froys and Constandts of France — who, though now too young 
to have become great producers, are destined to make their 
mark within a decade or two to come ; but the Plato of 
American Methodism, the man of the double faculty of argu- 
ment and intuition, was Dr. Olin, whose genius was kindred 

8 



170 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



to that of Sir William Hamilton, and whose only American 
competitor, in metaphysical ability, was the Edwards of 
Northhampton. 4 

In the department of the classical languages and their 
literatures, the Methodism of the United States has a repre- 
sentative in the Rev. John M'Clintock, D.D., LL.D., Presi- 
dent of the Troy University, whose Greek and Latin school- 
books have obtained a commanding position, and are exten- 
sively used in the best literary institutions, within and with- 
out the pale of Methodism, in a country more abundantly 
supplied with this class of productions than any in the world. 
He was largely assisted in the preparation of his series by 
the Rev. G. R. Crooks, D.D., a gentleman of accurate classi- 
cal attainments, whose labors in his favorite studies have but 
begun. With these leading scholars of this class, there must 
be recordect the name of the Rev. Stephen M. Vail, D JX, 
Professor in the Methodist Biblical Institute at Concord, 
N. H., who, though he has produced but little for publication, 
is doing much for classical learning among his pupils, and 
who, when he finds the opportunity to write and publish, is 
destined to prove himself one of the most thorough orientalists 
of this continent. There is another name to be mentioned in 
this immediate connection ; and it is the name of a gentleman, 
who has devoted every day of his public life to the active 
duties of the ministry. I refer to the Rev. Isaiah McMahan, 
A.M., whose Hebrew without a Master has been well ro- 

4 Among the metaphysical productions may be mentioned Smith's Ele- 
ments of Mental Science and the Mental Discipline by Rev. D. W. Clark, 
D.D. ; and, with some reason, Mercein's Natural Goodness and the Lectures 
of the Rev. H. B. Bascom, D.D. LL.D., might be placed under this division 
of the literature of American Methodism. Dr. Olin's Life Inexplicable 
except as a Probation is a splendid specimen of the application of meta- 
physical reasoning to the facts of revelation. Bledsoe's Theodicy : or a 
Vindication of the Divine Glory is also a most able argument based on 
fundamental principles. 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 171 

ceived by the best critics of this country, and who has writ- 
ten a still larger and abler work, now in manuscript, on the 
same subject. Mr. McMahan, besides the Hebrew, reads 
Greek and Latin accurately and extensively, and has mastered 
the better part of the oriental languages cognate to the 
Hebrew, particularly the Chaldaic, Syriac and Arabic, in which 
he is especially proficient. The name of Professor C. 
Brooks, A.M., of the Baltimore High School, is prominently 
connected with the cause of classical education in the Method- 
ist denomination. His Latin and Greek Lessons have each 
passed through several editions, and, for simplicity and per- 
spicuity of arrangement and style, I know not where or 
when they have been surpassed by any similar publications. 
But it is not possible, in a single paragraph, to give even the 
names of those Methodist classical scholars, who have 
merited well of their country for their works ; and it is still 
less possible to mention the scores of gentleman, who, in our 
Seminaries and colleges, by their thorough instruction, have 
made good proof of their deep, accurate and extensive 
acquaintance with the classical and oriental languages. 

It was a remark made by a learned gentleman, not a Me- 
thodist, when the Wesleyan University at Middletown was 
about to be established, that " the Methodists were a money- 
getting and energetic poople, and might be able to put up 
the brick and mortar of a University, but that they had not 
the scholars to do the inside finish." The result did not 
justify this uncharitable opinion ; and the truth now is, that, 
should every classical teacher in our numerous literary insti- 
tutions be annually swept away, there is a reserved list of 
the same class, and of equal ability, left in the bosom of the 
denomination large enough to supply the vacancies for twenty 
successive years, while the number every year pouring out 
of these schools, amply qualified for classical professorships, 
is nearly one-fourth as large as this reserve list itself. There 
is no people in the world, in fact, making the progress in 



172 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



this direction now being effected by the Methodists of the 
United States. 6 

The physical and mathematical sciences, however, have not 
been neglected by American Methodism. It has raised up a 
very respectable number of authors and teachers in this de- 
partment, who have obtained a high position in the scientific 
world. Augustus "W. Smith, LL.D., late President of the 
Wesleyan University at Middletown, Connecticut, and now 
Professor in the National Naval School of Maryland, stands 
at the head of our mathematicians ; and he has shown by his 
publications that he is second to but very few, if to any, of 
the leading mathematicians of this country. There is also 
J ohn J ohnston, LL.D., a veteran professor in the University 
at Middletown, whose works in chemistry have given him a 
hi^h rank among American authors in this field of learnino-. 
In the same class must be recorded the name of George C. 
Whitlock, LL.D., Professor of Natural History in the Iowa 
Wesleyan University, whose mathematical genius has been 
eulogized by Professor Pierce of Cambridge, and which is, 
without any dispute, of the very highest order. His publica- 
tions constitute a sort of summary of mathematical study ; 
and they have been pronounced, by such judges as Professors 

6 The series of classical school books prepared by Dr. M'Clintock includes 
a First and Second Book in Latin and a First and Second Book in Greek, 
which, thus far, are the most popular of his productions. Professor Brooks 
has published, in addition to his Greek Lessons, a reading book in Greek 
(with notes and a vocabulary), which constitutes an easy progressive 
introduction to the language. Perhaps the reader will suffer me to 
mention also Tefft's Greek Tables, constructed on a new principle, the 
object of which is to follow nature, and the use of which, as claimed by 
the author, will save at least half of the time usually spent in the acquisi- 
tion of the elements of the language ; and I must also mention Dr. Crook's 
New Latin-English lexicon, based on the Latin-German lexicon of Dr. C. 
F. Tngerslev, and now recently from the press. Dr. Crooks was assisted 
in this work by Prof. A. J. Schem, of Dickinson College, who should be 
mentioned as a classical scholar of no secondary capabilities. 



RA^K AXD POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



173 



Pierce and Lovering, to be remarkable exhibitions of mathe- 
matical learning, ability, and ingenuity. A series of very 
popular astronomical works, from the hands of Professor H. 
Mattison, A.M., has long been before the public ; and a fact 
to be mentioned in this connection is, that Mr. Mattison, 
excepting a brief and almost nominal occupancy of a chair in 
a Methodist seminary, has given his life to the labors of the 
itinerant ministry. Professor Silas L. Loomis, A.M. and M.D., 
who holds the first place in a first class literary institute at 
Washington, D. C, is the author of a short series of Arithme- 
tics on a new and improved plan, which is taking a high posi- 
tion within the better class of seminaries and academies in 
this country. Many years ago, an Algebra was given to the 
public by the Rev. D. W. Clark, D.D. ; and still earlier, an 
edition of Ward's Mosaic History was issued in Xew York 
under the supervision of the Rev. J. P. Diirbin, D.D. ; but 
I cannot speak of the particular merits of these two publica- 
tions, as I have never had the opportunity to examine 
them. 6 

From the earliest days of Methodism, great attention has 
been paid to the literature of the Scriptures. Mr. Wesley, it 
will be remembered, was converted while listening to the read- 
ing of some of Luther's comments on one of St. Paul's 
epistles ; the first employment of his little band, called the Holy 
Club, was the study of the Greek Testament ; and from that 
day forward, the ministry of Methodism has been noted for 

6 The leading -work of Dr. Smith on "Mechanics" has been received 
with deserved favor in the United States ; and the several productions of 
Dr. Johnston — A Manual of Chemistry on the Basis of Turner's Chemistry 
— A Manual of Natural Philosophy — and A Primary Xatural Philosophy — 
have gone through many editions and obtained for their author an envi- 
able rank among the scholars of this country. Dr. Johnston has also con- 
tributed several important and interesting scientific papers to the columns 
of Silliman's Journal, to the Methodist Quarterly Eeview, to the National 
Magazine, and to other similar publications. 



174: RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



its knowledge of the Bible. They have always been able to 
quote it with remarkable facility ; and among them have risen 
up, from time to time, some of the most wonderful specimens 
of this ability that have been known to the world. I will 
give a solitary example. The Rev. Isaac Puffer, for many 
years a traveling minister in central and western New York, 
has been known to cite over three hundred texts in a single 
controversial sermon, always giving the book, chapter and 
verse correctly, and from memory. He would let any person 
open the New Testament at random, and read any verse that 
happened first to arrest attention, when he would begin and 
rehearse the context, above or below, till the listener was 
satisfied of his ability to proceed without limitation. 

Again, he would ask any bystander to name any text by 
its book, chapter, and verse, w T hen he would repeat the 
passage, and then proceed as I have before mentioned. He 
could recite any book, selected by another or opened to by 
chance, forward or backward, as his company might desire, 
in either case announcing the number of each chapter and 
verse in passing. I have heard him say, that were the New 
Testament blotted out, he could reproduce it, word for word, 
with all its divisions and subdivisions as heretofore existing, 
from simple recollection ; and I have witnessed so many 
demonstrations of his familiarity with the Word of God, that 
I am compelled to credit his declaration. But Mr. Puffer 
was not alone, in this respect, in the ministry of his denomi- 
nation. Several similar cases have fallen under my personal 
observation ; and the Methodist clergy as a whole have been 
from the first, in their knowledge of the English version of 
the Scriptures, the most thoroughly disciplined ministry of 
modern Christianity. 

The early preachers of American Methodism did not write 
a large number of works in this department, as their first 
labor was to utter their instructions orally to the famishing 
multitudes around them. What the denomination has pro- 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 175 

duced, however, as might be expected of men so familiar 
with the text of revelation, are now not only numerous but 
of a most respectable order of merit. Foremost among this 
class of Methodist authors, I place the name of the Rev. F. 
G. Hibbard, D.D., whose Palestine is unrivaled by any similar 
production, whose Psalms Chronologically arranged with His- 
torical Introductions has acquired an American and European 
reputation, and whose pen has not been idle, nor is now idle, 
on other biblical topics of the utmost importance to the public. 
The works of James Strong, S.T.D., Vice-President of the 
Troy University, particularly his Harmony and Exposition of 
the Gospels, evince patient research and profound scholarship, 
not only in the original languages of Scripture, but in the entire 
field of the literature of revelation. The Rev. A. M. Osbon, 
D.D., in his Daniel Verified in History, has given another proof 
of the abilities of the Methodist ministry in these sacred studies. 
The Concordance of Alexander Cruden, hitherto the standard 
concordance in our language, has been fairly superseded by 
the ample and yet more condensed work of the Rev. George 
Coles. The Sabbath School organization of American Me- 
thodism abounds in small but popular publications in the 
biblical department, which, though written for the use and 
instruction of the young, have been very generally prepared 
by persons thoroughly competent by their natural talent and 
literary cultivation. The list of Methodist productions in 
biblical literature is altogether too ample for the limits of this 
chapter ; and I will mention only one more work on which 
American Methodism would be willing to risk its reputation 
for ministerial learning. It is the Chronology recently given 
to the world by the Rev. Peter Akers, D.D., President of 
the Hamline University, in which its author exhibits proof 
of his having exhausted the subject in his preparatory 
examination of it. Whatever may be thought of his conclu 
sions, no competent reader can peruse his volume without 
seeing on every page the demonstrations of his abundant 



176 BANK AND POWEK OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



learning. He has looked profoundly into every system of 
chronology, and into all the methods of recording the march 
of time, ancient and modern, from the half-authentic, half- 
mythical tables of the Egyptian and Oriental chronologers to 
the Olympiads and the Urbs Condita of the Greeks and 
Romans, and from these to every successive school of the 
Saturnian science to the current moment. Neither Usher, nor 
Hales, nor Sir Isaac Newton, nor Father Pouciet, nor Ideler 
himself, has ever surveyed the whole subject of epochal 
history with greater diligence or more patient research ; and 
yet, the writer of this rare work has given the greater part 
of a long life to the practical duties of a regular Methodist 
preacher. 7 

The theology of Methodism, as a matter of course, was 
written mainly by its founders ; and the consequence is, that 
the Methodism of this country has not been called to the pre- 
paration of a large number of strictly theological produc- 
tions. We republish here the entire works of the Rev. John 
Wesley, M.A., of the Rev. Adam Clarke, LL.T)., the Com- 
mentary of the Rev. Joseph Benson, the Institutes of Theo- 
logy of the Rev. Richard Watson, as able a performance as 
there is of its kind in the English language, and all the 

7 Some of the most useful works in this department, from the pens of 
American Methodists, are the Manual of Biblical Literature, by Rev. W. 
P. Strickland, D.D., the Compendium of the Gospels and the Harmony 
and Exposition of the Gospels, by James Strong, S.T.D., the Harmony 
of the Gospels, by the Rev. D. D. Buck, the Scientific Evidences of Chris- 
tianity, by William C. Larrabee, LL. D., Lectures on the Beatitudes, by 
the Rev. George C. Crum, A.M., the Biblical Atlas and the Scripture 
Gazetteer, by the Rev. T. 0. Summers, D.D., and the works named above 
from the pen of Dr. Hibbard. This is but a small part, however, of the 
larger volumes on this subject ; while the popular treatises are literally too 
numerous for a note ; and then there is an immense quantity of this sort 
of matter scattered over the denomination in the form of tracts or pam- 
phlets, to which must be added a large portion of the twenty-nine volumes 
of the Methodist Quarterly Review. 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 177 

standards of the Wesleyan press of England. We have 
added very considerably, nevertheless, to this list of theolo- 
gical authorities. Dr. Ralston has furnished an able restate- 
ment of the institutes of theology from the Arminian point 
of observation. A similar work, on a popular scale, has been 
achieved by the Rev. Asbury Lowrey, A.M. ; and his 
volume, entitled, Positive Theology, I regard as the best 
production of its size that has been produced on this subject 
by the denomination. The Calvinistic controversy has been 
conducted very ably, in separate treatises and in sermons, by 
the Rev. Nathan Bangs, D.D., Rev. Timothy Merritt, Rev. 
Willbur Fisk, D.D., late President of the Wesleyan Univer- 
sity at Middletown, Connecticut, and by the Rev. R. S. 
Foster, D.D., President of the Northwestern University, at 
Evanston, Illinois. Among the many Methodist works on 
the more practical topics of Christianity, the Christian Per- 
fection of the Rev. George Peck, D.D., the Central Idea of 
Christianity, by the Rev. J. T. Peck, D.D., and the numerous 
productions of Mrs. Phebe Palmer, the leading one of which 
is her Faith and its Effects, would be enough to establish the 
theological credit of the oldest and most erudite denomina- 
tion. The entire circle of theology has also been traversed 
in the various collections of sermons from Methodist authors ; 
and, in this department, so long as the collected discourses 
of the Rev. Thomas A. Morris, D.D., of the Rev. Henry B. 
Bascom, D.D., LL.D., and of the Rev. Stephen Olin, D.D., 
LLJD., shall remain in print, American Methodism will have 
no cause to avOid a comparison with any religious body since 
the days of Luther. 8 

8 It may be added, that, besides a volume of sermons recently put to 
press, the Rev. Dr. M'Clintoek has in preparation (1859) a theological 
and biblical encyclopedia, and that the Rev. William Nast, D.D., a gradu- 
ate of a European university, and a scholar of the highest eminence, is at 
work on a commentary of the Scriptures which is to be published simulta- 
neously, I trust, in English and in German. Though I wish to be cautious 

8* 



178 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



History and biography have received particular attention 
from the writers raised up by American Methodism ; but 
their genius has been spent almost exclusively on the biogra- 
phy and history of the Wesleyan movement : in which fact is 
again seen that centripetal influence which has so long and 
so completely marked the operations of Methodism, and 
which must soon give way to wider sympathies. In biogra- 
phy, American Methodism has a plethora of publications ; no 
denomination, I think, can compete with it in this particular ; 

in a chapter which must be egotistical in its nature, I think it can be said 
in sober truth, that for depth and breadth of mental vision, and for a com- 
bination of the leading qualities of a good intellect, reason — memory, and 
imagination — exhibiting themselves in logical strength, in extent of acqui- 
sition, and in a delicate and polished taste, Dr. Nast has not many supe- 
riors on this side of the Atlantic. The leading published works under this 
subdivision are the following : Christian Baptism, by Rev F. G. Hibbard, 
D.D. ; Obligations, Subjects, and mode of Baptism, by Rev. H. Slicer ; 
Infant Baptism, by Rev. F. G. Hibbard, D.D. ; Calvinistic Contro- 
versy, by Willbur Fisk, D.D. ; Calvinism as it Is, by R. S. Foster, D.D. ; 
Notes on the Gospels, 2 vols., by Rev. Andrew Carroll; Christian Perfec- 
tion, by Rev. George Peck, D.D. ; Christian Purity, by R. S. Foster, D.D.; 
The Lord's Supper, by Rev. S. Luckey, D.D. ; Guide to the Lord's Supper, 
by Rev. Daniel Smith ; System of New Divinity Examined, by Rev. F. 
Hodgson, D.D. ; Positive Theology, by Rev. A. Lowrey, A.M. ; Analysis 
of Butler's Analogy, by Rev. B. F. Tefft, D.D. ; Analysis of Butler's Ana- 
logy, by Rev. John M'Clintock, D.D. ; Daniel verified in History, by 
Rev. A. M. Osbon, D.D. ; Resurrection of the Dead, by Rev. C. Kingsley, 
D.D. ; Delineation of Romanism, by Rev. Charles Elliott, D.D., LL.D. ; 
Rule of Faith, by Rev. George Peck, D.D. ; Exposition of Universalism, by 
Rev. J. H. Power, D.D. ; Universalism As it Is, by Rev. N. D. George ; 
Universal Salvation, by Timothy Merritt, and Rev. Willbur Fisk, D.D. ; 
Miscellaneous Sermons, by Rev. T. A. Morris, D.D. ; Sermons, by Rev. 
H. B. Bascom, D.D., LL.D. ; Sermons, by Rev. Stephen Olin, D.D., LL.D. ; 
Sermons, by Rev. N. Bangs, D.D. ; by Rev. William Capers, D.D. ; by 
Rev. John Dempster, D.D. ; by Rev. Daniel Curry, D.D. ; by Rev. Elijah 
Hedding, D.D. ; by Rev. Samuel Luckey, D.D. ; by Rev. J. T. Peck, D.D. ; 
by Rev. Peter P. Sandford, D.D. ; and by Rev. D. D. Whedon, D.D. ; the 
Methodist Episcopal Pulpit, collected by Rev. D. W. Clark, D.D. ; and 
several similar collections 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 179 

and some of these productions, like the Life and Times of 
Bishop Hedding, by the Rev. D. W. Clark, D.D., the Life of 
Dr. Willbur Fisk, by the Rev. Joseph Holdich, D.D., and the 
Life and Times of Bishop Asbury, by the Rev. William P. 
Strickland, D.D., are models of this class of works, though 
they can scarcely hold a higher place than the capital little 
volumes entitled, respectively, the Life of James Quinn, by 
the Rev. John F. Wright, D.D., and the Life of John Col- 
lins, by the Hon. John M'Lean. Judge M'Lean's book is a 
work of the heart, Mr. Collins having been his acknowledged 
spiritual father, by whom he was introduced, not only into 
the church of Christ, but into the Methodist denomination ; 
and the result is, that the eminent abilities of the man, and 
the strongest and tenderest affections of his nature, combine 
to render his production the Agricola of American Method- 
ism. The Compendium of Methodism, by the Rev. James 
Porter, D.D., a gentleman who will long be remembered for 
this volume and for his Chart of Life, is a sort of historical 
exposition of the church of which he is a learned and able 
representative. The Temporal Power of the Pope, by the 
Rev. John M'Clintock, D.D., written in refutation of the 
Speech of the Hon. Joseph R. Chandler, of the Lower House 
of Congress, exhibits the author's dialectic strength to good 
advantage, but is still more suggestive of his profound and 
extensive reading. The Golden Horn, from the manuscripts 
left by the Rev. Dr. Olin, and edited by Dr. M'Clintock, is 
another production of the highest order in this department. 
It is here, also, that belong a numerous collection of his- 
tories of Methodism, written by clergymen of the American 
branch of it, including the journals of such pioneers as 
Francis Asbury and Jesse Lee. The first complete history 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, however, is from the 
hand of the venerable and able Rev. Nathan Bangs, D.D., 
now the Nestor, formerly the Ajax, of the ranks in which he 
mustered. But the great historical masterpiece of the deno- 



ISO RANK AND POWEB OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



urination on this side of the Atlantic is the History of - the 
Religions Movement of the Eighteenth Century, called Me- 
thodism, by the Rev. Abel Stevens, LL.D., who, prior to 
the inception of this undertaking, had been known as the 
author of the Memorials of the Introduction of Methodism 
into the Eastern States, of the Polity of Methodism, of the 
Ministry for the Times, of Sketches and Incidents from the 
Saddlebags of an Itinerant, and of several minor per- 
formances, besides numerous reviews and other contribu- 
tions to the Methodist periodicals of the day of the first 
order of literary merit. This history of Methodism, how- 
ever, up to this date, is the great achievement of his life ; it 
has received the highest encomiums of the American and 
European press ; and I believe it is not too much to say of it, 
that it is not only the ablest specimen of ecclesiastical history 
thus far furnished by the authors of this country, but that it 
takes rank with the best classical histories, ecclesiastical or 
civil, of modern times. 9 

9 The works most known in this department of American Methodist 
literature, are Asbury's and Lee's Journals ; Life and Times of Asbury. by 
W. P. Strickland, D.D. ; Biographical Sketches of Eminent Methodist 
Ministers, by Rev. John M'Clintock, D.D. : History of Camp-meetiags, by 
Rev. James Porter, D.D. ; Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, by Rev. 
W. P. Strickland, D.D. ; History of the Christian Church, by Rev. Calvin 
Ruter, D.D. ; Autobiography of Rev. J. Travis, by Rev. T. 0. Summers, 
D.D. ; History of the Discipline, by Rev. Robert Emory, D.D. ; Life of Rev. 
John Collins, by John M'Lean, LL.D.; Life and Remains of Melville B. Cox, 
by Rev. G. F. Cox, A.M. ; Life of Bishop Emory, by Rev. Robert Emory, 
D.D. ; Gems of Eemale Biography, by Rev. Daniel Smith ; Autobiography 
of Finley, by Rev. "W. P. Strickland, D.D. ; Life of Freeborn Garretson, 
by Rev. X. Bangs, D.D. ; Sketch of Philip Gatchl by John M'Lean, LL P. ; 
Life and Times of Bishop Hedding, by Rev. D. W. Clark, D.D. ; Life and 
Times of Rev. Jesse Lee, by Rev. L. M. Lee, D.D. ; Heroines of Methodism, 
by Rev. George Coles ; Ten Years of Preacher Life, one vol., and Pioneers 
Preachers and People of the Mississippi, in one vol., by Rev. W. 
H. Milburn ; History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, by Rev. 
Xathan Bangs, D.D. ; Lost Chapters from the early History of the 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 181 



It was a remark of Mr. Wesley, that he had respect to- 
ward young men, because they were likely to live, and pos- 
sibly to be useful, when he should be silent in his grave ; 
and the thought so impressed him, that he made it a question 
to be presented to all his preachers, whether they would be 
diligent in the instruction of the young. He was the first to 
establish the Sabbath School, open to all children, who were 
instructed by benevolent individuals laboring without pay. 
He intimates, in one of his letters, that he felt like appealing 
from the grown-up population of Great Britain, who were 
settled in their habits of neglecting the Word of God, to the 
rising generation whose minds were ready for the reception 
of the truth. He always believed that Methodism was to 
have a special commission to the young ; the disciplines of 
both branches of his great family, English and American, 
have inscribed the same idea upon their pages ; and now, 
probably as a consequence of this original impulse, the Me- 

M. E. Church, by Eev. J. B. Wakely ; Memorials of the Introduction of 
Methodism into the Eastern States, by Eev. Abel Stevens, LL.D. ; History 
of Missions in the Methodist Episcopal Church, by Rev. W. P. Strickland, 
D.D. ; Mormonism and the Mormons, by Rev. D. P. Kidder, D.D. ; Life 
and Letters of Stephen Olin, by Mrs. Olin ; Original Church of Christ, by 
Rev. X. Bangs, D.D. ; Autobiography of a Pioneer, by Rev. Jacob Young ; 
Pioneers of the West, by Rev. W. P. Strickland, D.D. ; Poet Preacher, by 
Rev. Charles Adams, A.M. ; Life of James Quinn, by John F. Wright, 
D.D. ; Life of Bishop Roberts, by Rev. Charles Elliott, D.D., LL.D. ; His- 
tory of American Bible Society, by Rev W. P. Strickland, D.D. ; Recol- 
lections of George W. Walker, by Rev. M. P. Gaddis ; Wesleyan Preachers, 
by R. A. West, Esq. ; Life of Willbur Fisk, by Rev. Joseph Holdich. D.D. ; 
Life of John Wiclif, by Rev. Daniel Curry, D.D. ; The Great Secession, by 
Rev. C. Elliott, D.D., L.L.D. ; Annals of Southern Methodism, by Rev. C. F. 
Deems, D.D. ; Sketches of Western Methodism, by Rev. James B. Finley, 
D.D. ; Brazil and the Brazilians, by Rev. Daniel P. Kidder, D.D. ; Words that 
shook the World, by Rev. C. Adams, A.M.; History of Methodism, by Rev. 
Abel Stevens, LL.D. ; and to this abbreviated list I may be permitted to 
add, as works a little out of the common course of topics of Methodist 
writers, Hungary and Kossuth, aud Webster and his Master-pieces, by 
the author of this volume. 



182 BANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

thodism of the United States sends out a larger list of Sab- 
bath-school publications than any religious body in the 
world. In this field alone, it has a literature worthy of any 
people of any age, enough of itself, without a page of all the 
volumes hitherto referred to, to give a literary as well as re- 
ligious character to the denomination by whom it has been 
produced. A catalogue of this literature, without note or 
comment, would make a book ; and I can only add, there- 
fore, that American Methodism is indebted chiefly for this 
result to the Rev. Daniel P. Kidder, D.D., and to the Rev. 
Dr. Wise. Dr. Kidder is knoirn to the world outside of 
Methodism, for his Sketches of Residence and Travels in 
Brazil, a work as much read in Europe as in the United 
States ; but the glory of his life consists, and probably will 
consist, in his having laid the foundations of the greatest 
establishment for the emission of Sabbath-school publications 
of the age in which he lives. He was not alone in his efforts ; 
he employed the best talents of his church, male and female, 
in the preparation of his volumes, which are too numerous to 
be individually recognized in this chapter ; and it is possible 
only to remark, that, of the works outside of the Sabbath- 
school list, but written expressly for the young, the leading 
authors are the Rev. William Hosruer, the Rev. George 
Peck, D.D., the Rev. Jesse T. Peck, D.D., the Rev. E. O. 
Haven, D.D., and the Rev. Daniel Wise, D.D. Mr. Hos- 
mer's Self Education is a learned and judicious appeal to the 
natural aspirations of young men ; and the Manly Character 
of Dr. G. Peck is a yet higher effort of the same general 
scope. The True Woman, by Dr. J. T. Peck, is a good 
conception, wisely and carefully executed, a truthful and 
philosophical solution of the deep problem of domestic hap- 
piness; Dr. Haven's Young Man Advised has taken a 
respectable position in this class of works ; but the repre- 
sentative head of this department of our literature, the 
Coryphseus of it, the Peter Parley of American Methodism, 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 183 



without any contradiction or competition, is the Rev. Dr. 
Wise, whose juvenile publications have run from edition to 
edition, till it is no longer of any use to attempt to number 
the thousands of them which have gone out to bless and edu- 
cate the up-rising world. 10 

There is one department of literature, which, contrary to 
what might have been the natural expectations of the public, 
has received more than its share of attention from the writers 
of American Methodism. I refer to the belles-lettres depart- 
ment, in which, from the beginning of history, there have 
been in every language at least a hundred failures to one suc- 
cess. It includes both prose and poetry ; and it would not be 
unnatural to suppose that Methodism, a system so stern in its 
hold upon the moral faculties, would clench the mind with 
too firm a grasp to admit of that free play of the intellectual 
powers, essential to every work of art. It must be remem- 
bered, however, that John G. Whittier is a Quaker, that 
John Milton was a Puritan, and that there is nothing in the 
strictest moral regimen unfriendly to the liveliest and 

10 The Sabbath-school publications of American Methodism are so nu- 
merous that I will give only the numbers of them in their several classes. 
The Children's Library consists of 465 vols. ; the Youth's Library of 664 
vols. ; and the Sunday-School Library, as per catalogue for 1859, of 1127 
vols. ; and the issues of the Tract Department, which engrosses the labors 
of the Rev. James Floy, D.D., as special editor — in the English, French, 
German, Danish, and Swedish languages — consisting of every size of work 
from a couple of fly -sheets to a bound volume, make up an additional 
library of more than a thousand distinct publications. And yet the Sun- 
day-School and Tract Departments of American Methodism are of very 
recent date. The first Sabbath-School periodical ever started in this 
country by the denomination was the S. S. Messenger, founded, owned, 
and edited in 1837, by Rev. D. S. King, who, for this reason, must be 
acknowledged as the father of this division of our work. Mr. King was 
also the founder, publisher, and editor of the Guide to Holiness, which 
preceded the periodical styled the Beauty of Holiness, now edited by 
Rev. Mr. French, and which anticipated the valuable and abundant labors 
of Mrs. Palmer by many years. Detitr digniori ! 



184: RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



sublimest freedom of the imagination. Methodism, as has 
been seen, is the child of a family of poets ; and there never 
has been a period in its history, when it would not have been 
easy to show the world how consistent it is with the artistic 
spirit in every order and style of composition. Strange as it 
may appear to some, American Methodism, instead of feeling 
any inferiority in this department of its literature, is rather 
inclined to invite the notice of the public to it. It would lay 
before the critical reader a list of the authors it relies on for 
a favorable judgment upon the question of its capacity for 
elegant composition. The works of the Rev. Henry B. Bas- 
com, D.D., LL.D., have already been acknowledged as classi- 
cal by the most fastidious critics of this country ; the Knick- 
erbocker Magazine has for years been lavish of its praises on 
the elegance and richness of his style ; he has been ranked by 
this authority among the first of the recent and living writers 
of the language; but American Methodism by no means 
looks upon Dr. Bascom as the fittest representative of its 
labors in this field. His remarkable pulpit oratory made him 
a more widely known representative ; but a better style than 
Dr. Bascom's will be found in the productions of the Rev. 
Joseph Cross, D.D., another Methodist of the southern 
States, who, though very eloquent in speech, is scarcely known 
beyond the limits of his denomination. Northern Method- 
, ism, on the other hand, can point to such gentlemen as the 
Rev. D. D. Whedon, D.D., the Rev. William H. Allen, 
LL.D., the Rev. Abel Stevens, LL.D., the Rev. Erastus 
Wentworth, D.D., and the Hon. William C. Larrabee, 
LL.D., each of whom has as good a claim to represent the 
prose-writers of American Methodism as that of Dr. Bascom. 
Dr. Whedon is not only a prose-writer but a poet of decided 
elegance. Dr. Allen has few superiors in the tastefulness of 
his composition ; and in the use of the beautiful imagery of 
the Greek and Latin mythology, which, with the finest clas- 
sical references and quotations, he weaves into the texture 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 185 

of everything he writes, he has no superior on the western 
shores of the Atlantic. Dr. Stevens is best known, so far as 
this side of his character is concerned, as a writer of sketches 
— sketches mainly of men of great eminence — in which he 
shows the hand of a master. It is not his diction, nor the 
structure of his sentences, in which he particularly excels ; 
but any one of his sketches, taken as a whole, is a well- 
drawn and*splendidly executed picture. He is a pen-painter, 
and calls to mind the gentleman standing next in order, Dr. 
Went worth, who, in his younger days, would draw a better 
off-hand portrait with his pencil, on the blank leaf of a book, 
than half of the professional limners of his generation, but 
who has subsequently become one of our most ornate and 
graphic writers. Dr. Larrabee, recently deceased, stood at 
the head of our sentimental writers ; his diction is " English 
undefiled ;" though a thorough classical scholar, and a reader 
of the leading languages of modern Europe, he never tricks 
off his sentences with French phrases and learned allusions ; 
beginning with a clear and full conception of his topic — 
which is generally characterized by a tinge of melancholy — 
he proceeds directly forward in a strain of great earnestness, 
which admits of no excess of ornamentation, his heart throb- 
bing more and more as he advances, and the heart of his 
reader melting with the progress of the subject, till the 
theme is closed and the words of beauty cease to flow. Dr. 
Larrabee, so far as mere style is concerned, is the most at- 
tractive prose-writer of American Methodism ; but there is 
still another name, not yet mentioned in this connection, the 
Rev. Edward Thomson, D.D., LL.D., president of the 
Wesleyan University of Ohio, who, for all the qualities of a 
belles-lettres style,' must be regarded, I think, as the stand- 
ard-bearer in this department of the literature of American 
Methodism. He has more thought than Dr. Larrabee, as 
much spirit as Dr. Stevens ; and his periods, though not as 
nicely balanced as those of Addison, nor as well rounded off 



186 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

as the periods of Dr. Johnson, remind the reader of both of 
these English classics. Dr. Thomson is a poet as well as a 
prose- writer ; but he is outstripped in metrical composition 
by many of his own denomination. William C. Brown, 
Esq., of Boston, is a poet of fine abilities, though not gifted 
with the " madness " of his order. Like Halleck, he has 
written only a few pieces ; but these have been quoted and 
read so much, and have become so thoroughly incorporated 
into our common speech, that the public have arrived at a 
sort of forgetfulness of their author. In the same connection 
must be mentioned the names of Mary Maxwell, known only 
as " Mary " in our American periodicals, and of Helen C. Gard- 
ner, whose poems are in every way equal to those of Miss 
Alice Cary, a well-known poetess of this country. Whoever 
will look over the pages of the Ladies' Repository, for the 
last fifteen years, will find a list of poetical contributors to 
that magazine, not less than ten or twelve in number, out of 
the scores that have contributed poems to its columns, any 
one of whom would figure to advantage in the current poeti- 
cal literature of the United States, and some of whom would 
do it honor. The Rev. John D. Bell, still a young man of about 
twenty-five, has sent into the world several poems, of the 
many written by him, which set him high among the sons of 
song, while his numerous prose articles are equally replete 
with every element of true poetry except the measure and 
the rhyme. He has now in manuscript a belles-lettres work, 
entitled Man ; or the Higher pleasures of the Intellect, 
which will add immeasurably to his literary reputation. 
The most gifted of all the poets of American Methodism, 
nevertheless, is the Rev. Mark Trafton, A.M., author of a 
book of European letters, and lately a member of Congress 
from the State of Massachusetts. Mr. Trafton has written 
but little ; his few pieces, however, have the ring of the real 
metal in every stanza ; his genius is so abundant and various, 
that he is equally capable of almost every species of poetical 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 187 

composition, the humorous being rather the most congenial 
to his natural disposition ; and it is much to be regretted, 
that he has not seen fit to wander more frequently and 
fondly around the shade-covered fountains of Parnassus. His 
imitations of Punch are quite on a par with Punch himself; 
his satire is caustic to the very last degree ; he could write 
puns as triumphantly as Saxe, had he a little less of the 
loftier sense of the true dignity of man ; and he might long- 
since have made himself one of the first of the serious and 
sentimental poets of this country, equal to any one below the 
rank of Bryant and possibly not below this rank, had he 
given himself to this ambition, and could he have sufficiently 
held down that ebullient spirit that now makes him the lead- 
ing Methodist representative in the fraternity of Thomas 
Hood. 11 

11 The principal productions in this department are Letters from Europe 
by Rev. M. Trafton, A.M., and his fugitive poems ; Speeches by Rev. 
George Cookman (both of these works being artistically executed and 
not written in the common style of such publications) ; Miscellany, by 
Rev. Thomas A. Morris, D.D., Sketches from the Study of an Itinerant, by 
Rev. A. Stevens, LL.D. ; Tales and Takings, by Rev. J. V. Watson, D.D. ; 
Scraps and Poems, by Mrs. Searles ; Collegiate and Popular Addresses, by 
Rev. D.D. Whedon, D.D. ; Sketches, Literary and Religious, by Rev. 
Erwin House, A.M. ; Sketches and Incidents from the Saddlebags 
of an Itinerant, by Rev. Abel Stevens, LL.D. ; The Methodist by 
(nom de plume) Miriam Fletcher ; The Rifle, Ax and Saddlebags, and 
Pioneers, Preachers and People of the Mississippi, by Rev. W. H. 
Milburn, A.M. ; National Magazine, 12 vols., edited by Rev. Abel Stevens, 
LL.D. and Rev. James Floy, D.D. ; the Ladies' Repository, 14 vols., edited 
successively by Rev. L. L. Hamline, D.D., Rev. Edward Thomson, D.D., 
LL.D., Rev. B. F. Tefft, D.D., Hon. William C. Larrabee, LL.D., and Rev. 
D. W. Clark, D.D. ; the Educational, Biographical, Moral and Religious 
Essays, as well as the Letters from Europe, by Rev. Edward Thomson, 
D.D., LL.D. ; Rosabower, by Hon. W. C. Larrabee, LL D. ; A year in 
Europe, by Rev. Joseph Cross, D.D. ; Lectures, by Rev. H. B. Bascom, 
D.D., LL.D. ; Headlands of Faith, by Rev. Joseph Cross, D.D. ; The City of 
Sin, an allegory, by Rev. Mr. Remington ; and the Christian Virtues aa 
a Divine Family, by Rev. D. D. Buck. 



188 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 



It may be imagined by the reader, who has not made him. 
self acquainted with the real condition of modern Methodism, 
and who has derived his opinion of it from its early history 
in this country, or from the misrepresentations of its enemies, 
that I must have taken great labor to gather up and parade 
all the distinguished names of American and European 
Methodism for the purpose of this denominational exhibition. 
This is not so. The labor has been, on the other hand, to 
discover how to exclude individuals from these lists and do 
equal justice to the successive departments of our literature 
and to those having claims to be mentioned in connection 
with them. No reference, therefore, has been made to a 
large and most able class of miscellaneous writers, some of 
whom have written books, while others have made their repu- 
tations by magazine articles of great value, whose combined 
publications would constitute of themselves alone a very 
abundant literature for some of the smaller denominations. 
There is the Rev. James Floy, D.D., late editor of the 
National Magazine, and the Rev. Daniel Curry, D.D., recently 
• president of the Indiana Asbury University, and the Rev. 
J. T. Crane, D.D., an industrious contributor to the pages of 
the Methodist Quarterly Review, and the Rev. Calvin Kings- 
ley, D.D., editor of the Western Christian Advocate, and the 
Rev. Charles Collins, D.D., president of Dickenson College, 
and the Rev. William Hunter, D.D., professor in Allegany 
College, whose pens have not been idle, and whose essays 
have contributed largely to create and foster the literary 
spirit of American Methodism. Among the miscellaneous 
writers, also, should be recorded the names of the Rev. James 
V. Watson, D.D., the Rev. Maxwell P. Gaddis, A.M., the 
Rev. Joseph M'D. Mathews, D.D., Gabriel P. Dissossway, 
A.M., Mrs. C. M, Edwards, the Rev. L. D. Davis, the Rev. 
S. R. Coggeshall, D.D., who has been styled " the walking 
library of Methodism," the Rev. R. W. Allen, A.M., the 
Rev. J. S. Inskip, the Rev. John Miley, D.D., the Rev. 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 189 



Robert Allyn, A.M., whose style is sometimes Addisonian, 
the Rev. Bp. Osman C. Baker, D.D., the Rev. Bp. E. S. 
Janes, D.D., the Rev. Bp. M. Simpson, D.D., and the Rev. 
T. F. R. Mercein, A.M, whose united publications would 
make a library of no ordinary value. 12 

But I will burden the memory of the reader with no more 
names. I have given enough to justify the statement of the 
New York Evangelist, an organ of the Presbyterian denomi- 

12 Fair representative specimens of the general literature of Methodism 
in the United States will be found in the following works : Observations in 
the East, by Rev. John P. Durbiu, D.D. ; Travels in the East, by Rev. 
Stephen Olin, D.D., LL.D. ; California Life Illustrated, by Rev. William 
Taylor; Arthur in America, by Rev. W. P. Strickland, D.D. ; the Metho- 
dist Discipline, by Rev. 0. C. Baker, D.D. ; Chart of Life, by Rev. James 
Porter, D.D. ; Christian Love, by Rev. Daniel Wise ; Christian Principle 
and Mental Culture, by Rev. Stephen Olin, D.D. LL.D. ; Christianity 
Tested by Eminent Men, by Prof. M. Caldwell, A.M. ; Church Polity, by 
Rev. A. Stevens, LL.D.; Christian's Manual, by Rev. Timothy Merritt ; 
Responsibilities of the Methodist Episcopal Church, by Rev. Nathan Bangs, 
D.D. ; Class Meetings, by Rev. John Miley, D.D. ; Compendium of Metho- 
dism, by Rev. James Porter, D.D. ; Essay on Dancing, by Rev. J. T. Crane, 
D.D. ; Death-bed Scenes, by Rev. D. W. Clark, D.D. ; Defense of our 
Fathers, by Rev. John Emory, D.D. ; Incentives to Doing Good, by Rev. 
R. W. Allen, A.M. ; Domestic Piety and Family Government, by Rev. 
John H. Power, D.D. ; Life and Works of Bishop Emory, by Rev. Robert 
Emory, D D. ; Episcopacy and Slavery, by Rev. George Peck, D.D. ; Epis- 
copal Controversy Reviewed, by Rev. John Emory, D.D. ; Fire-Side Read- 
ing, 5 vols., by Rev. D. W. Clark, D.D. ; The Sacred Hour, and The Foot- 
prints of an Itinerant, by Rev. M. P. Gaddis ; Letters to School Girls, by 
Rev. J. M'D. Mathews, D.D. ; Life in the Itineracy, by Rev. L. D. Davis; 
Life Among the Indians, by Rev. J. B. Finley, D.D. ; Ecclesiastical Polity 
of Methodism, by Rev. F. Hodgson, D.D. ; Economy of Methodism Illus- 
trated, by Rev. Thomas E. Bond, M.D., D.D. ; Reasons for Becoming a 
Methodist, by Rev. Daniel Smith ; Why are you a Methodist, by Rev. 
George Peck, D.D. ; Minister of Christ for the Times, by Rev. C. Adams, 
A.M. ; New Testament Church Members, by Rev. C. Adams, A.M ; The 
Works of Stephen Olin, D.D., LL.D., 2 vols. ; Pallissy, the Huguenot 
Potter ; Parent's Friend, by Rev. Daniel Smith ; Temporal Power of the 



190 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

nation in the United States, that " no religious body in this 
country can present so various and extensive a collection of 
denominational literature as the Methodist Church." This, 
without any doubt, is the simple truth; and I have now 
mentioned the writers who have taken leading parts in the 
achievement of this result. Since the general fact is con- 
ceded, not only by the New York Evangelist, but by many 
similar authorities, I have not deemed it out of place to 
remark, in passing, upon the comparative merits and cha- 
racteristics of the authors, whose works have been adduced 
in proof. It would not have been impossible to accompany 
each name with an estimate of his standing as a writer, com- 
ing from beyond the limits of the Methodist body ; but this 
would have been a useless labor. The majority of these authors 
are known at least for their titles of literary distinction ; and 
these, in spite of the low opinion of their value entertained 
by many, indicate clearly enough the general conviction in 
regard to their relative position in the world of letters. 
There are many names recorded in the foregoing pages, how- 
ever, without such affixes as commonly arrest the attention 

Pope, by Rev. John M'Clintock, D.D. ; Preaching Required by the Times, 
by Rev. A. Stevens, LL.D. ; Finley's Memorials of Prison Life, by Rev. 
B. F. Tefift, D.D., LL.D. ; Religious Training of Children, by Rev. Stephen 
Olin, D.D., LL.D. : The Right Way, by Rev. J. T. Crane, D.D. ; Street-Preach- 
ing, by Rev. "W. Taylor ; Sinfulness of American Slavery, by Rev. Charles 
Elliott, D.D., LL.D. ; Faith and its Effects, Useful Disciple, and the Neglected 
Specialty of the Last Days, by Mrs. Phebe Palmer ; Adventures and Obser- 
vations on the West Coast of Africa, by Rev. Charles W. Thomas, A.M. ; 
Wisdom in Miniature, by Rev. D. Smith ; The Higher Law, by Rev. William 
Hosmer ; Ministerial Education, by Rev. S. M. Vail, D.D. ; and the Original 
Church of Christ, by Rev. Nathan Bangs, D.D. And here I wish particularly 
to add, that nearly all the books mentioned in all the foot notes, as well as 
in the text, are those included in the publishers' lists of the Methodist Book 
'Rooms at New York (200 Mulberry St.), while it would be absolutely impos- 
sible, in a volume of this character, to set down the works written by 
American Methodist authors and published by the various houses of the 
United States. 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 191 

of a reader, and which are not likely, therefore, to indicate a 
claim to any place at all among learned and literary charac- 
ters, who, nevertheless, could by no means be excluded from 
the fellowship of Methodist authors. I will give one example 
of the whole. It shall be the Rev. T. F. R. Mercein, a regular 
Methodist preacher, a man of the saddlebags and circuit, who 
happened to attract the notice of a gentleman, whose praise 
reminds one of the laudatus laudatis of the classics. In his 
Pitts Street chapel lecture, the Rev. Dr. Dewey, an eminent 
Unitarian clergyman of Boston, in referring to the rank and 
power of American Methodism, employs the following lan- 
guage : " Yery imposing statistics can be presented, for 
instance, of the progress of Methodism. I am glad there 
can be. I rejoice at the work which Methodism has done. 
I like its practical and affectionate spirit. I have attended a 
Methodist church myself, for two years, in my country home, 
and there had the happiness to know its pastor, and to call 
my friend, one of the most thoughtful, reverent and true men 
that I have ever known in any church." This is said in the 
body of the discourse ; but, as if this eulogy had not satisfied 
his heart, he adds the following in a foot note : " The Rev. 
Thomas Randolph Mercein. I hope I may be pardoned this 
affectionate allusion to the memory of Mercein, in a series of 
discourses designed to bring out the points of union and 
sympathy between different classes of Christians. I never 
knew a young man more fitted, by natural endowments and 
spiritual gifts, for the holy office he took upon him. He 
began to preach very young — at nineteen, and died at thirty- 
one. His remains rest in the cemetery at Sheffield, and 
ought to have a monument. Beautiful in person, simple in 
manners, strong in purpose, and indefatigable in labor, in 
him were combined manliness, earnestness and delicacy, with 
great strength and beauty of intellect. His work on Natural 
Goodness shows what he was. I do not agree with his con- 
clusion; but to the originality, insight, eloquence, and gene- 



192 RANK AND POWEE OF AMEBIC AN METHODISM. 



rosity of Ms writing, no one can refuse his testimony." This, 
though abundantly merited, is probably about as much as 
would hare been accorded, by the most friendly critic, to 
such a man as Francis Bacon, or John Locke, or Joseph 
Butler at the age of thirty. Indeed, the production referred 
to in such terms by Dr. Dewey reminds the reader every- 
where of the logical ability of Butler's Analogy of Religion, 
to which it is scarcely inferior for that searching and ex- 
haustive analysis which characterizes the immortal work of 
the great English bishop. Xo, Dr. Dewey does not say too 
much of this youthful Methodist itinerant, untitled, unhonored, 
and unknown as he was ; but Mr. Mereein was not alone in 
the ranks of even the younger men of American Methodism. 
There are others, scattered widely over the continent, toiling 
upon their obscure country circuits, who are buried in the 
conscious oblivion of their humble but' glorious work. Mr. 
Mercein, however, is distinguished among his peers by the 
fortune of having accidentally arrested the notice of a man, 
whose candor was equal to his knowledge, while the many 
live, labor and die unnoted, because their brethren disrelish 
the egotism of asserting a position for them, and because it is 
the grace of few to know or notice merit beyond the narrow 
circle in which they chance to move. 

And now in taking leave of this general topic, it ought 
to be particularly observed, that nearly all the examples of 
the literary men of American Methodism have been taken 
from the northern division of that church. This course has 
been pursued, not for the want of any willingness to give due 
credit to the acknowledged literary character of the Metho- 
dism of the Southern States, and of the various smaller 
bodies in this country and in the British provinces, but 
because either division was found to furnish more represen- 
tatives than could be mentioned in these pages, and because 
of a fear of not doing even-handed justice to the gifts and 
works of those with whom I have had less personal acquaint- 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 193 



ance. Bat the defect is easily supplied. As the southern 
branch of American Methodism is nearly as numerous as the 
northern, has existed longer, and has ranged more freely 
among all grades of society, especially the higher, it will not 
he difficult for rhe reader to make a due addition to the fore- 
going statement for that section of the country ; he can make 
another suitable addition for the Methodist Protestant Church 
of the United States, of which the Rev. Thomas H. Stockton, 
D.D., is an indefatigable representative ; and when his esti- 
mate has been thus completed with a proper consideration of 
the comparative youthfulness of Methodism in America, and 
with a just respect to all the circumstances of its origin and 
progress — the preoccupation of the territory, the prejudices 
of the population, and the feebleness of its beginning — he 
will certainly admit, that the present condition of the litera- 
ture of this denomination is one of the marvels of modern 
history ! 

If the reader will now remember that the doctrines of 
Methodism are nothing but the doctrines of the thirty-nine 
articles of the Church of England, which are the basis of 
every modern evangelical denomination within the compass 
of the English language ; if he vrill remember, also, that the 
men who introduced these doctrines, with the Wesleyan in- 
terpretation, into the United States, were not only men of 
education, but of remarkable foresight, energy, and perse- 
verance ; he will need no help to enable him to perceive 
that the success of American Methodism could scarcely have 
been otherwise than abundant ; and when that success itself 
is fairly considered — the several millions of American citizens 
that have been converted at its altars — its two millions of 
living members — the eight or ten millions of our citizens 
now professing their attachment to its doctrines, discipline, 
and worship — the ratio of its progress in former years, 
greater than that of any other religious body, increasing as 
the denomination grows in numbers — the wonderful efforts 

9 



19-i RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM 



made, and made successfully, toward the general elevation 
of this vast portion of our populace by the means of a 
thorough and practical education — and the indubitable fact, 
that the zeal of the whole body, instead of declining with 
the lapse of time, positively warms under the excitement of 
its progress, while its appetite for victory becomes keener by 
every conquest — there can no longer remain a doubt as to 
the amount of social power which such a cause, and such a 
people, must exert within the limits of a country set apart 
and established for the very purpose of giving to the virtu- 
ous and enlightened individual, whatever be his poverty or 
wealth, his plebeian or noble blood, his equal influence on 
the questions of the hour and place, as well as upon the more 
distant fortunes of the world. 

It is the special glory of American Methodism, let it be 
remembered, that it has taken hold of the masses of the popu 
lation, reaching down to the very lowest grades of it, and 
raised them up, by religious and educational instrumen- 
talities, to a rank of respectability and power. It has sel- 
dom, particularly in the older portions of the country, drawn 
the leading citizens into its embrace ; and it was long a suffi- 
cient answer to its advances to say of it, that it included only 
the poorer and the insignificant inhabitants of the land. 
This, in fact, Avas for many years the standing and ©un- 
successful argument against it ; and, while Methodism found 
no difficulty in meeting any of the real logic of its opponents, 
this sneer was positively unanswerable, because time was 
required to chasten, and develop, and elevate the multitudes 
left without religious instruction by the older denominations. 
But the sneer has now been fairly answered. If Methodism 
has received but few of the first men of the nation, it has the 
greater honor of having made them in every section of the 
Union. Taking the nation as a whole, it would be found, 
I firmly believe, that a larger number of its influential citi- 
zens, professional and practical, are now members of the 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 195 

Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States, than of 
any other religious body on the continent. In several of the 
southern and western States, including almost the whole of 
the great Mississippi Valley, there are more of these educated 
classes in connection with it, either as members or attend- 
ants, than can be counted by all of the remaining denomina- 
tions included within the same limits. American Methodism 
has sent more members to our State governments, more re- 
presentatives to Congress, more chaplains to Congress, than 
any other religious people. One of the Presidents of the 
United States was the convert and class-member in the 
church with the first principal of one of the Methodist aca- 
demies of New England. Another died in the fellowship 
of the church, and received the last sacrament at the hands 
of a Methodist preacher, in one of the southern States. Still 
another, after his election to the first position in the gift of a 
once grateful Republic, bowed at a Methodist altar in a city 
of the West, where he obtained, among the humblest of the 
seekers of religion, that preparation for death which, alas ! 
he so soon required for his stay and hope in the hour of trial 
There is something so peculiarly interesting in the conver- 
sion of the venerable personage here referred to, when he 
was President elect of the United States, that I will give a 
single scene of the revival where it happened. It was at 
Wesley Chapel, Cincinnati, during the winter of 1840-41 ; 
and, in addition to the labors of the regular minister of the 
station, the Rev. M. P. Gaddis, the Society was enjoying 
the services of the celebrated John Newland Maffitt, not only 
the most eloquent preacher, but one of the sweetest singers 
of his time. Everything was in motion. It was a season of 
great interest and power. Mr. Gaddis, in his captivating 
Footprints of an Itinerant, in a running description of this 
revival, says : " In the midst of the mourners at Wesley 
Chapel, I had the pleasure of meeting every night for more 
than a week, the lamented President of the United States, 



196 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

the late General William H. Harrison. I was struck with 
the deep interest he manifested in our altar exercises. He 
generally stayed till a late hour, standing up during the 
singing, and in a lowly, kneeling posture in time of prayer for 
the penitents. On one occasion, he spoke to me in the fol- 
lowing deeply-affecting, and interesting manner: 'Brother 
Gaddis, I know there are some of my political opponents that 
will be ready to impugn my motives in attending this revival 
meeting at this particular time, but I care not for the frowns 
or smiles of my fellow-men. God knows my heart and under- 
stands my motives ;' and then, laying his hand upon his 
heart, he exclaimed with much emotion, and with a fervor 
that I shall never forget, 4 A deep and abiding sense of my 
inward spiritual necessities brings me to this place night 
after night? At the close of one of our meetings, while the 
Rev. J. N. Maffitt was singing his favorite song, concluding 
with the chorus, 

" ' To die on the field of battle 
With glory in my soul ;' 

General Harrison walked to the foot of the pulpit steps 
and reached out his hand, which was immediately grasped 
by brother Maffitt, while he continued to sing : 

" 4 Old soldier travel on ; 

I'll meet you in bright glory, 
To die on the field of battle 
With glory in my soul.' 

" The effect was electrical. The audience simultaneously 
rose to their feet, while every eye was moistened with 
tears.'' 

There was told me once a story of the meeting at this 
revival of General Harrison with the Hon. John M'Clean, 
one of the associate justices of the Supreme Court of tho 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 197 

United States, then and now a member of the society at 
Wesley Chapel, which, could I rely upon it as entirely 
authentic, I would relate as an illustration of the leveling 
power of the Gospel, when its influence becomes irresistible 
and overwhelming ; but, omitting this, I will state that I 
have myself seen the judge weeping and wiping his eyes 
amidst the joyous acclamations of a Methodist love-feast, 
as if he were accustomed to such scenes ; and it is well 
known, that even at Washington, when surrounded by the 
bustle and folly of the capital, with the weight of his judicial 
duties on him, he has long been in the habit of meeting, with 
undeviating punctuality, the humblest of his brethren at the 
little weekly class. Such instances of the union of eminence 
and piety, however, have not been uncommon in the history 
of American Methodism. It has sent, within the last ten 
years, more than a hundred of its members to the Congress 
of the United States, and about a score of its ministers, who, 
after attending to their obligations in the Senate chamber, 
or in the hall of the lower house, were accustomed to preach 
to their fellow-men on the Sabbath, sometimes in the city, 
but more frequently in the less noted appointments of the 
adjacent country. There is a senator there now, who is 
performing every year this double duty. The same thing 
was done too, by the Rev. Joshua Hall, when presiding over 
the Senate, and officiating as the governor of Maine. In the 
winter of 1844, I made my first visit to the western States, 
and I was pleased, while resting over the Sabbath at India- 
napolis, to find that one of the classes in the Sabbath-school 
at Roberts' Chapel, named after our departed bishop, had 
for their teacher the governor of Indiana. His successor, 
who is also a Methodist, now represents the United States 
at the court of Prussia ; and I rejoice to learn, that he there 
holds his weekly class-meetings, to which he invites all his 
American visitors, and such of the representatives of other 
foreign countries as seem to be at all religiously inclined, 



198 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

acting thus as the joint minister of his country and his 
God! 

But it is not upon this class of persons that Methodism 
has relied for its past successes ; and Mr. Wesley distinctly 
warns his followers not to be high-minded, not to be expen- 
sive and ambitious in their plans, lest the cause should be 
thus consigned over to the wealthy and the great. Me- 
thodism had its mission to the many ; these it exerts itself 
to raise to the rank and condition of the few ; and its great 
social influence now consists in the possession of a vast 
portion of the population of the United States, who are a 
sober, moral, religious, industrious, and hence well-informed 
and successful people, grateful for the benefits received by 
themselves from a heart-felt religion, and therefore alive 
to the good work of perpetuating it among their children, as 
well as of extending it as far as possible over society and the 
world around them. And the force of numbers in such a 
government as that of the United States, and especially of 
numbers so thoroughly j)ossessed of all the elements of 
strength, must be great. Two millions of peojue of this 
description, distributed into every nook and corner of the 
country, sustained by a good moral character, educated after 
the fashion of their neighbors, abundantly supplied with all 
the means of popular and practical information, owning 
their full share of the material wealth of the nation, sup- 
ported by the open profession of eight millions of their fel- 
low-citizens, and represented, if not led, by men who have 
enjoyed every known advantage of learning and of observa- 
tion, can be nothing less than a controlling power in the pre- 
sent condition and future history of this country. 

Much of the coming influence of American Methodism 
must spring from the peculiar manner of its distribution. It 
is weakest in the New England States ; it is stronger in the 
middle States ; it is stronger yet in the southern ; and 
strongest of all in the western, toward which the star of our 



RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 199 

empire has been ever tending, and where it is destined, for 
ages to come, to stand in the ascendant. Nothing could have 
been more fortunate for the position and influence of Metho- 
dism. We of New England, having learned at school the 
influence exerted by our gallant little republics in the asser- 
tion of our independence and the establishment of our liber- 
ties, are dreaming yet over these consolatory lessons of our 
childhood ; but we may as well drop the fond and flattering 
illusion ; for the great middle States, with New York and 
Pennsylvania in the lead, could get along very well without 
us ; and the, ten southern States, as much a unit as New 
England by their situation and social interests, and rich in 
their means of material prosperity,' are together stronger than 
the States of the interior ; while the grand and glorious West, 
large enough for an empire without counting a foot of our 
national soil lying east of its separating range of mountains, 
will soon have more than half of the wealth, population and 
power of what we proudly but justly denominate the Great 
Republic. New England, therefore, is the smallest and 
weakest of these four general divisions of our country ; and 
it is here alone that American Methodism is comparatively 
feeble ; but it may not continue in this condition long ; for 
while Congregationalism, the strongest of all the New Eng- 
land denominations, is confessedly losing ground, New 
England Methodism is making the most wonderful advances ; 
and it is even now, in one of the six States, superior in 
numbers to Congregationalism by several thousand. In the 
four middle States, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey 
and Delaware, Methodism had in 1850, according to the 
United States census, 2556 churches, while the four remain- 
ing evangelical and leading denominations — the Baptist, Con- 
gregationalist, Episcopalian and Presbyterian — had an aggre- 
gate of only 3600, showing that Methodism holds about three- 
quarters of the popular power of evangelical Christianity in 
that central division of the country, where the leading State 



200 RANK AND POWER OF AMERICAN METHODISM. 

and the metropolitan city of the continent are found. In the 
ten southern States and the District of Columbia, the above- 
named denominations have 4458 churches, the Methodists 
5015, which gives Methodism an excess of several hundred 
churches over this combined evangelical competition ; and in 
the eleven western States, the comparison stands — the four 
denominations, 4899 churches, Methodism, 4863, which, with 
the statistics of the territories compiled since the census of 
1850, will give to the youngest leading religious body in the 
land a relative ascendency still greater than in the States of 
the South. The sum of it all is, that, in ~New England, 
Methodism is rapidly gaining on the ancestral religion, evi- 
dently stretching forward to an ultimate superiority ; that, 
in the middle States, it nearly balances the four great evan- 
gelical denominations ; that, in the States south, it more than 
balances them ; that, in the great West, which is soon to 
wield a weightier influence than ail the other States combined, 
it has taken a still stronger position ; and that, in all the 
States together, could there be a vote of the population taken 
and declared according to the rule of plurality — the rule of 
the original articles of confederation — Methodism might this 
day be made, by popular suffrage, the National Religion of 
the country. And yet, reader, American Methodism is so 
young, that the writer of this page had the pleasure, only a 
few months ago, of entertaining for a week one of its earliest 
representatives, yet hale and strong, who was an active mem- 
ber of the convention that gave to it being and form by 
preparing and adopting its original Constitution ! 



CHAPTER V. 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OE 
METHODISM. 

It cannot be denied, then, that Methodism has become a 
power among the social influences of the modern world. Her 
two or three millions of members, and her eight or ten mil- 
lions of additional adherents and supporters, decently educated 
according to the popular system of their day, and some of 
them among the most learned and intellectual of their genera- 
tion, with their mammoth printing establishments and presses 
pouring out rivers of their literary and religious publications, 
with their almost numberless academies, seminaries, colleges 
and universities, in which they abound more than any exist- 
ing denomination, and with their friends and representatives 
in all the high places of this country as well as of other coun- 
tries, must take a rank and power of no secondary character. 
It has been seen, too, how Methodism stands prepared to 
take the position of the Church of England, and more than 
make good its long-lost influence on the British population, so 
soon as the abolition of the tything system, an event sure to 
come quite speedily, shall have broken off the connection in 
Great Britain of Church and State, and made room for the 
development and propagation of a form of Christianity, which 
all England now admits to be evangelical and devout, and to 
have been inaugurated and confirmed by the good providence 
of God. It has been seen, on the other hand, how Methodism 
has already taken possession of at least one third of the 
population of the United States ; how it is distributed so as 

to give it the greatest possible influence on the destinies of 

201 



202 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



this country ; and how, by the very fact of this remarkable 
distribution, it cannot fail to advance to a still higher point 
of power, as the settlement of our new territory progresses, 
and as the nation itself becomes more and more established. 

But we must now take a loftier stand-point, indulgent and 
intelligent reader, and make our observations for a moment 
on a grander scale. We must see what must be the influence 
of such a system of religion, full of its youthful energy and 
ardor, impatient of obstacles and ambitious of success, guided 
by a vast experience and backed by the force of overwhelm- 
ing numbers, besides being as regular and methodical in its 
movements as an army under the most perfect discipline, not 
only on the histories of individual countries, but on the for- 
tunes of the world. Its ten or twelve millions, I know, with 
every advantage that may be claimed for them on the score 
of zeal and education, may be regarded as an inferior force 
among the larger religious bodies of mankind. They maybe 
looked upon as nothing very formidable, as nothing for the 
lodgment of much hope, by the side of the hundreds of 
millions yet adhering to the Greek and Roman churches. 
Numbers, however, as has been before remarked, are not 
always strength ; and, as I have applied this axiom to Metho- 
dism, it is equally important to see how it leaves Catholicism 
a secondary power among the social and national influences 
of the modern world. Catholicism, as a whole, is ignorant ; 
it is enslaved ; it is consequently imbecile. Methodism, as a 
part of the great Protestant reform, is enlightened, free, and 
therefore strong. Catholicism is non-progressive, stationary, 
obsolete. Methodism is hungering and thirsting for improve- 
ment, for self-development ; it is ever on foot for some point 
beyond itself; it is fresh with all the living ideas of the 
living age. Catholicism is a system opposed to the interests, 
rights and sympathies of the masses of mankind ; it lives by 
the oppression of the population ; it maintains its power by 
holding a rod of terror over the freedom of the race and the 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 203 



free use of the faculties of the human mind. Methodism is 
of the people and to the people ; its animus is that which 
beats at the hearts and thrills through the veins of the great- 
est number of the human family ; it glories in breaking up 
artificial distinctions and bringing all men to one common but 
superior level ; its watch-words are free will, free grace, and 
every sort of freedom, intellectual and moral, theological and 
scholastic, individual and social, temporal and eternal. As 
the people advance, Catholicism declines, but Methodism goes 
forward with equal pace, rejoicing in the progress of its 
mission. In the marshalling of the mighty affairs of time, 
Catholicism has chosen the part that loses, and is more and 
more to lose, till it goes out and is known no longer ; while 
Methodism has had given it of heaven the part that wins ; 
and its future is to be linked, as with hooks of steel, to the 
onward and perpetually advancing movement of the great 
human brotherhood. Every step taken by the millions in 
their forward march toward the goal, which both hope and 
history hold out to us, leaves Catholicism just so far behind ; 
but Methodism, as the religion of the masses, is a portion of 
this universal progress ; and, when its dues shall be recog- 
nized and given it, it is to be acknowledged, I believe, as the 
wheel within the wheels, to which humanity has been in- 
debted, now a century and more, for much 'of its motion and 
momentum. 

We must look once more, however, from the high position 
taken for the moment, that this sketch of the rank and power 
of Methodism may be completed. We have beheld what 
peculiar bearing a proper distribution of it has, and will con- 
tinue to have, in the United States. Let us now look again 
at its position in Great Britain. It began, as has been shown, 
in England, where it now has intrenched itself, and where it 
stands ready to take the falling scepter of the national estab- 
lishment. Its next best field is Ireland, where it is not only 
the most needed, but where, as it is more and more received, 



204 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



it will have the greater boldness, freedom, and consequently 
power on the fortunes of the empire. Its weakest point is 
Scotland, whose Presbyterianisni is rapidly breaking up into 
fragments, and going the way on which rank Calvinism is 
everywhere descending to that inferiority, to that oblivion, 
which cannot fail to be its termination. Presbyterianism in 
Scotland, Catholicism in Ireland, and the Establishment in 
England, are all gradually giving way, while Methodism, 
over the three old realms, is gradually and even rapidly 
advancing. It cannot be long, indeed, before it will be the 
leading religious power among the population at large of this 
triune kingdom; and now, while this movement is evidently 
going forward — while Methodism is all the time reaching 
upward and taking hold of power — power is at the same 
moment stooping down to the reach of the people, whose 
predilections are growingly Methodistic. Every reform in 
the British Parliament, every movement of a political nature 
among the parties, has been a reform, a movement, which has 
given greater social influence to English Methodism; this 
tendency is not to stop, but go forward, until Methodism in 
England becomes the acknowledged head of its religious 
denominations, the religion of its people ; and when this time 
shall come, it will then be ready to be proclaimed, as it is 
now felt by every philosophic mind, that Methodism has taken 
possession of those two great Protestant nations, which con- 
trol, and will for ages continue to control, the character, 
conduct, and destinies of the nations and populations of the 
world. 

To justify declarations so distinct and bold, and so far 
beyond the concessions of even the more intelligent of the 
people of our day, let it be remembered, that, if England and 
the United States are the countries destined to give laws and 
regulations to the world, their influence, their power for 
good, comes not so much from their material resources as 
froni their national character and the peculiarity of their situ- 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 205 

ation. England, for example, controls the Mediterranean, 
and to a great extent all the nations of Africa, of Asia, and 
of Europe lying upon its borders, not by owning and hold- 
ing possession of its shores, but by having in her hands a 
single stronghold at the entrance of that inland sea, from 
which her guns can command the respect of every sea-craft 
passing into or out of it, compelling every one of them to pay 
homage to her power. In the same way, England and the 
United States are, by their position, to say nothing of their 
wealth and number, the two great Gibraltars of the globe. 
Nothing can go from this side of the Atlantic to any part of 
the eastern hemisphere without passing near the coast of 
Britain, or making its way along within bullet distance of her 
thousand forts. Nothing, on the other hand, can come from 
the eastern side of the planet, and do business among the 
nations and peoples of this continent, without falling into 
similar contact with our naval forces. England and the 
United States are also the most enlightened countries, all 
things considered, of modern times ; from them are derived 
all the leading influences, political, educational, and social, 
which now govern the conduct of mankind ; and so long as 
knowledge is power, so long as the most developed are also 
the strongest nations, just so long will England and the 
United States be and remain the controlling governments of 
this world. These two countries, moreover, are free coun- 
tries; they are independent, or able to be so, of all othei.; 
countries ; they have personal freedom for every one of their 
citizens ; and, taken together, they are the two heaven-com- 
missioned evangels of popular rights, of popular principles, of 
constitutional government, which they are to preach to their 
fellow-nations, by precept and by example, by trade and by 
treaty, till their very triumphs in this holy labor shall add 
immeasurably to their capabilities of shaping the destinies of 
other lands. They have another source of power. It is their 
native tongue. The language which the two countries speak 



206 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



carries in it more of the civilization of the race, and conse- 
quently more of intellectual, moral and even material force, 
than any other known to man ; its Ithuriel touch is felt on 
the mind of the Mongol as on the heart of the Hibernian ; it 
is the language of the two leading empires of modern times, 
whose strength at home is proverbial, and whose possessions, 
the fairest and broadest that the sun has ever warmed or 
enlightened, nearly belt the world ; it is the language of the 
world's commerce, which every man must speak, or have ren- 
dered to him, if he would sell the products of a continent, or 
buy a pin ; it is the language of useful and popular informa- 
tion, of every-day facts and principles, of that species of 
literature which surrounds the globe like an atmosphere, and 
which all men having the slightest pretensions to intellecual 
life must breathe ; it is the missionary language, the language 
of unadulterated Christianity, which, of all the religions of 
mankind, possesses the elements of universality, and the 
power to propagate itself among all grades and conditions of 
the race ; and it is the language of human progress, of pro- 
gress in all directions — in mental, moral, and social concerns 
alike — which, like a universal talisman, is to change the face 
of things, and bring on a new era, and a succession of them, 
till the millennial morn shall break. These two nations, 
indeed, now give law to man ; they now divide the world 
between them, each having its hemisphere to manage ; there 
is now not a country within the hemispheres, either eastern 
or western, that would dare to resist them ; and the time 
will soon arrive, when they will be able to stand united 
against an armed combination of all the nations of the world. 
Behold, then, thoughtful reader, what divine Providence has 
brought to pass within a little more than a single century 
of time. One hundred and twenty years ago, the Rev. John 
Wesley, M.A., a clergyman of the Church of England, and a 
fellow of her leading university, inspired with the new idea 
of making the religion of his country practical instead of 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 207 

theoretical, vital instead of formal, was turned out of doors 
and disgraced in the eyes of the nation by being sent to the 
highways and hedges for his congregations ; he dispatched 
his messengers to the United States, where, in their persons, 
he received similar treatment ; but he went directly forward 
with his undertaking, halting at no obstacles, discouraged by 
no disadvantages, repulsed by nothing rising up against him, 
his noble heart beating with forgiveness to his enemies, 
because he knew them to be ignorant of his great intentions, 
and his soul fired the more by every successive trial of his 
courage, because of his assurance that God was with him ; 
and the result now is, that the old church which turned her 
back upon him is crumbling to pieces — that the opposing 
sects of his missionary field have ever since been falling 
behind the growth of population and power of this new 
republic — that his religion, on the other hand, reproachfully 
styled Methodism by its enemies, has virtually taken religious 
possession of the two countries, which, in peace and in war, 
in arts and in arms, intellectually, morally, socially, as well as 
in material things, have the control of the human family. 
Methodism, in a word, now stands without a rival ; it is the 
" Christianity in earnest " of modern history ; and its rank 
and power among men may be stated in the concise but 
expressive formula, if religion is really the mainspring of 
human society, as is universally conceded, that it rules and 
will rule the two nations which govern, and which are to 
govern more and more, the mind and movements of the other 
nations of the globe ! 

And it is here, reader, that I ask you to pause and think ; 
it is here that I wish you to compare the present and the past ; 
it is here that I desire you to witness the difference between 
the Methodism of your own generation and the Methodism 
of three generations since ; it is here that you are to look 
upon the greatest problem of modern history, the mystery of 
Methodism, a mystery often beheld and wondered at, but 



208 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



never solved ; and it is here, at this point of our progress in 
this labor, that you are at liberty to commence with me an 
exposition of this mystery, a resolution of this problem. Arid 
before we begin this work, if you imagine that my statement 
of the past success and present condition of Methodism has 
been too eulogistic — though I have labored to speak with 
historic soberness — if you suppose, even without particular 
examination of my authorities and of the facts in the case, 
that Methodism is not as strong as I have represented it, 
then it is my earnest entreaty that you would set your hand 
to it and make every deduction which your knowledge, your 
conscience, or your imagination may suggest. Then, with all 
possible diminution of the state of Methodism throughout the 
world, I wish to ask you if it is not still a problem, if its 
relative position in society is not yet a mystery, when its 
existing numbers, wealth, education, literature and power are 
compared with what it was in its origin and with the means 
which it has been able to employ. The truth is, as it seems 
to me, that, with every conceivable allowance for the acknow- 
ledged prejudices of the writer, and w r ith every reduction 
that can be thought consistent with a reasonable probability, 
there is enough left of Methodism to make it the wonder of 
modern history ; and it cannot be looked upon by a person 
of a philosophic temper without the suggestion of profound 
inquiries respecting the causes of its growth. That it has 
grown beyond all example is very certain ; that this rapid 
development and increase must have fundamental causes is 
not less sure ; but it will require no little mental labor, it may 
be, on the part of writer and reader, to search out those causes, 
and state them precisely as they are ; and yet, whatever the 
work may cost, there must be thousands of intelligent people 
in the w^orld, scattered over America and Europe, who, 
whether connected or not connected with the system of 
Methodism itself, would experience a profound satisfaction 
could they be certain of having reached a solution of this 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 209 



problem. Those holding no personal relations to this great 
movement must be interested to know, by this example, how 
such enterprises in general may be successfully carried on ; 
and all who do hold these relations, who are members of the 
Methodistic family, can but desire to see in the past of Metho- 
dism its future probabilities, and the safest instrumentalities 
of its larger growth ; while there can be but very few of 
the thoughtful of either class, but few reading and rea- 
soning individuals in society at large, who would not con- 
sider a settlement of this question as one great point gained, 
not only to historic truth, but to the useful knowledge and 
common intelligence of mankind. 

It is a custom of philosophers, however, before giving 
their own opinions upon any important subject, to gather up 
the expressed judgments of other persons, that they may 
thus set the topic for examination where the light of history 
is concentrated and condensed upon it. It is natural for us 
to desire to know what other men have thought of a matter 
which we propose to investigate for ourselves ; and, as 
nearly every question has two sides to it ; or is made to have 
two characters, favorable and unfavorable, according to the 
positions of those making the examination, it would be un- 
philosophical to view the one before us from only a single 
stand-point. Methodism has had its enemies as well as 
friends ; it has appeared to many as a very great disaster to 
religion, and to others as among the greatest of earthly bles- 
sings ; and I shall, therefore, devote the present chapter to 
the two extremes of outside opinion in relation to its merits, 
giving place to no authorities having the slightest connection 
with the Wesleyan system. 

I. Wesley and Wesleyanism had their enemies, and met 
with the fiercest opposition, from the very first, some of the 
most virulent of their opponents being of the Wesleyan 
household itself. Samuel Wesley, the eldest of the family, 
and, as has been seen, a gentleman of great natural endow- 



210 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



merits, for several years wrote the severest strictures upon the 
doctrines and proceedings of his brother ; he pronounced 
him fanatical and foolish ; and he went so far as to accuse 
him of insanity. Nearly all the sisters united for a time in 
similar views of the " disloyal and schismatic " position of 
John and Charles ; but it has been shown how they all lived 
to see the day of reconciliation with their brothers, when 
they gave them special honor for their works, and covered 
them with their benedictions. 

Among the early acquaintances of the Wesleys, was Mrs. 
Hutton, at whose house John and Charles Wesley boarded 
after their return from Georgia ; it was while stopping with 
her that they experienced that sudden and radical change 
which they both looked upon as their conversion ; it was 
here too, that they commenced their great work of calling 
the world to the enjoyment of a heartfelt religion ; and it 
was the account which this woman gave to their brother 
Samuel, which so prejudiced his mind against them, and 
which laid the foundation of all the clamor that at once rose 
up about the " fanaticism and " wildfire " of early Me- 
thodism. She tells Samuel how Charles Wesley was " con- 
verted " in a moment, while his brother John was praying 
for him, though he himself was not then converted ; she gives 
him an account of John's conversion as he was waking out 
of sleep one morning ; she relates how the brother had con- 
fused and misled her son, a young man, she says, of good 
disposition but of weak judgment; she describes the wild 
scenes and extravagant speeches seen and heard by her at 
the house of Mr. Bray, a follower of the Wesleys, where they 
had themselves experienced this strange delusion ; and she 
then goes on to ask the interference of Samuel to save her 
son from the popery and folly of this " rank fanaticism." 
" These things," this gossiping woman says, referring to the 
conversions above mentioned, "they make no secrets; for 
good Mr. Baldwin told me he heard your brother Charles 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 211 

give a relation of a young man at Oxford, who had lived, as he 
himself thought, a very good and pious life ; but he was first 
convinced it was nothing before he could get this faith ; upon 
which he threw himself upon his face, upon his chamber 
floor, and lay so (I suppose praying) an hour or two, and 
then rose up with great joy and peace of mind. This affected 
Mr. Baldwin so much, that the next opportunity he had to 
talk with my son he put into his hands a sermon of Bishop 
Bull upon the subject of the assistance we may expect from 
the Holy Spirit. But all authors and writers but the Bible 
are rejected ; and every man, if he will practice what he 
kuows, shall have all the light necessary for himself taught 
him from God. They are, I think, aiming at something 
more ; for my son told me that a woman, who is a dissenter, 
had three years and more, as she fancied, been under the 
seal of reprobation ; and upon her coming to Mr. Bray's, 
where your brother Charles, Mr. Bray, and my son were 
praying for her, though she went home in the same 
melancholy, yet, in an hour after, she sent them word that 
she was delivered from the power of Satan, and desired them 
to return public thanks for the same in her behalf. I heard 
a poor, simple barber, whose name was Wolfe, relate such a 
dream that a blacksmith had, as a sign of his just getting into 
Christ, and of his own power, as put me beyond patience. 
My poor son lay ill of a fever at the same time, with such a 
number of these fancied saints about him, that I expected 
nothing but his weak brain would be quite turned. I think 
it is not far from it, that he will not give any, the most pious 
or judicious author his father recommends, ajreading. Now 
your brother John is gone, who is my son's pope, it may 
please God, if you give yourself the trouble to try, he may 
hear some reason from you. If you could bring your brother 
Charles back, it would be a great step toward the recon- 
version of my poor son. Your two brothers are men of great 
parts and learning ; my son is good-humored and very unde- 



212 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



signing ; sincerely honest, but of weak judgment ; so fitted 
for any delusion. It would be the greatest charity you ever 
did, and your charity of all kinds is very extensive. If you 
can undeceive your brother Charles and my son, it would put 
a stop to this wildfire." 

Such was the gossip sent to Samuel Wesley by Mrs. 
Hutton ; and Samuel, a man of high church principles and 
proud of the ancestral glory of the Establishment, listened 
to her revelations; but his answer, while it plainly condemns 
the proceedings and doctrines of his brothers, gave a lesson 
to his informant from which a wiser person would have 
drawn deep and profitable instruction : " What Jack means 
by not being a Christian till last month, I understand not. 
Had he never been in covenant with God? Then as Mr. 
Hutton observes, baptism was nothing, Had he totally 
apostatized from it ? I dare say not ; and yet he must be 
either unbaptized, or an apostate, to make his words true. 
Perhaps it might come into his crown, that he was in a state 
of mortal sin, unrepented of; and had long lived in such a 
course. This I do not believe ; however, he must answer 
for himself. But where is the sense of requiring everybody 
to confess that of themselves in order to commence 
Christians? Must they confess it, whether it be so or no ? 
Besides, a sinful course is not an abolition of the covenant, 
for that very reason, because it is a breach of it. If it were 
not, it would not be broken. Renouncing everything but 
faith may be every evil, as the world, the flesh, and the devil : 
this is a very orthodox sense, but no great discovery. It 
may mean rejecting all merit of our own good works. What 
Protestant does not do so ? Even Bellarmin, on his death- 
bed, is said to have renounced all merits but those of Christ. 
If this renouncing regards good works in any other sense, as 
being unnecessary, or the like, it is wretchedly wicked ; and 
to call our Saviour's words the letter that killeth, is no less 
than blasphemy against the Son of Man. It is mere 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 213 

Quakerism, making the outward Christ an enemy to the 
Christ within." He then goes on to put a variety of cross- 
questions to his witness, which would have puzzled a much 
deeper person, but closes up in a style that must have been 
sufficiently satisfactory to the Mrs. Huttons of that genera- 
tion : " I heartily pray God to stop the progress of this 

LUNACY." 

He is equally severe upon his brother's doctrine of con- 
version and assurance, in a letter addressed to John, but 
given also to the public. " You need fear no controversy 
with me, unless you think it worth while to remove these 
three doubts : 

"1. Whether you will own or disown, in terms, the necessity 
of a sensible information from God of pardon ? If you dis- 
own it, the matter is over as to you ; if you own it ; then, 

"2. Whether you will nut think me distracted to oppose you 
with [i.e. having] the most infallible of all proofs, inward 
feeling in yourself, and positive evidence in your friends, 
while I myself produce neither ? 

" 3. Whether you will release me from the horns of your 
dilemma, that I must either talk without knowledge like a 
fool, or against it like a knave ? I conceive neither part 
strikes. For a man may reasonably argue against what he 
never felt, and may honestly deny what he has felt to be 
necessary to others. You build nothing on tales,, but I do. 
I see what is manifestly built upon them ; if you disclaim it, 
and warn poor shallow pates of their folly and danger, so 
much the better. They are counted signs or tokens, means 
or conveyances, proofs or evidences, of the sensible informa- 
tion, etc., calculated to turn fools into madmen, and put them, 
without a jest, into the condition of Oliver's pastor. When 
I hear visions, etc., reproved, discouraged and ceased among 
the new brotherhood, I shall then say no more of them; but 
till then I will use my utmost strength that God shall give 
me to expose these bad branches of a bad root — and thus : 



214 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



Such doctrine as encourages and abets spiritual fire-balls, 
apparitions of the Father, etc. etc., is delusive and dangerous. 
But the sensible necessary information [doctrine] etc. is 
such — ergo — [i.e. Wesley's doctrine of the possibility and 
necessity of a knowledge of sins forgiven by the witnessing 
of the Holy Spirit is delusive and dangerous.] I mention not 
this to enter into any dispute with you, for you seem to dis- 
approve though not expressly disclaim ; but to convince you 
I am not out of my way, though encountering of windmills. 
I will do my best to make folks wiser.'''' 

Samuel was imitated for a time in this opposition to his 
brother's doctrine of conversion and the witness of the Spirit 
by nearly all the members of the Wesley family ; not only 
the sons and daughters, but the sons-in-law, two of whom 
were clergymen of the Church of England, were violent 
against him ; one of them, Rev. Mr. Hall, turned him out of 
his house, when he made him a visit at his residence in Salis- 
bury, and wrote the foulest calumnies against his doctrines ; 
and the other, Rev. Mr. Whitelamb, who had been educated 
at the expense of the Wesleys, especially of John, turned his 
back on his benefactors, and spent his particular malice on 
the teaching of the brothers in relation to the witness of con- 
version : " To be frank," he says in a letter to John Wesley, 
" I cannot but look upon your doctrines as of ill consequence 
— conseqicence, I say, for, take them nakedly in themselves, 
nothing seems more innocent, nay, good and holy. Suppose 
we grant that in you and the rest of the leaders, who are men 
of sense and discernment, what is called the seal and testi- 
mony of the Spirit is something real; yet, I have great 
reason to think, that, in the generality of your followers, it is 
merely the effect of a heated imagination." 

This temporary rejection of Wesleyanism by the Wesley 
family went out to the world and was exaggerated by 
interested parties ; the enemies of Mr. Wesley made great 
use of it in their controversial attacks upon him ; he was set 



CHARACTER ASD SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



215 



forth as a reprobate in his own father's household; every 
conceivable slander was built upon this foundation, not only 
upon his religious views, but upon his private character ; and, 
as soon as he was dead, and after he had had the satisfaction 
of seeing every one of his father's family converted to his 
opinions, the early correspondence between him and them, in 
which their objections are so forcibly and plainly stated, was 
gathered up into a volume and published by Dr. Priestley, 
who says nothing, however, to inform the reader of the fraud 
thus practiced on him. The design of Dr. Priestley seems to 
have been to injure Methodism by stereotyping all the gossip 
of the day, as well as such authentic testimony as the letters 
of the "Wesley family, in relation to the fanaticism of Mr. 
Wesley and his followers. Every tale that was told, every 
letter he could find, eveiy scrap in circulation, about the 
visions and ecstasies of the Methodist converts — their sudden 
conviction and conversion — their strong expressions of a 
knowledge of sins forgiven — their professed assurances given 
them in seasons of fervent supplication — appear to have been 
examined by him, and it was from his work mainly that the 
learned men of his generation, and of succeeding times, have 
taken their bias against the doctrines, discipline and worship 
of Wesleyan Methodism. As a Unitarian, his opinion of 
Wesleyanisni was of no special consequence to the British 
and American public ; but as a scholar of high reputation, as 
a member of the Royal Society of England and a friend of 
Dr. Franklin, his book could not fail to have, as it has had, a 
wide circulation, and it is easy to this day to trace the spirit, 
and often the very language, of that work in nearly every 
outside review, or estimate, or critique of Methodism till the 
period of the first publication of Dr. Southey's Life of Wesley. 
Mrs. Hutton gave her account of the conversion and early 
spiritual labors of her two boarders to their eldest brother ; 
that brother, high-churchman to the loftiest pitch, but sincere 
and able, communicated the impressions thus received to the 



216 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



remaining members of his father's family ; the correspondence 
that could not fail to be in this way elicited between these 
gifted but stubborn brothers and sisters was given by Dr. 
Priestley to the public; and the end of all was a general mis- 
leading of the public mind, not in regard to what actually 
took place and was really said at some of the Wesleyan 
meetings — for there is no doubt that much extravagance was 
enacted in them — but of the views and sentiments of Mr. 
Wesley, and of his leading associates and successors in rela- 
tion to them. He and they always had their misgivings in 
respect to outward manifestations of every kind whatever ; 
they often spoke directly and pungently against dreams, 
visions, trances and apparitions ; but because they did not 
doubt the sincerity of the professions, and deny the good life 
of those, who, though troubled with these fancies, gave the 
best of evidence of a change of heart, they were condemned 
together with their less enlightened followers as fanatics ; 
and hence fanaticism was the charge at once fastened upon 
Methodism in every country, and has traveled along with it, to 
the beginning, at least, of the present generation. The board- 
ing-house keeper of Little Britain scarcely dreamed, when 
she wrote her hearsay gossip to Samuel Wesley, that it was 
one day to affect the mind of a great philosopher, and through 
him fix the reputation for a long time of the largest religious 
denomination of modern history. 

But Dr. Priestley's view of Methodism, wide as has been 
its sway, exerted its influence upon the world chiefly through 
men of science. The religious circles of Great Britain and 
of other countries received their cue from altogether 
another quarter. They owe it to the writings of the Rev. 
Augustus Montague Toplady, a Calvinistic clergyman of the 
Church of England, who, like Saul of Tarsus, thought him- 
self doing God's service in proportion as he opposed and per- 
secuted Wesleyan Methodism. Mr. Toplady was a man of 
fine abilities ; he was a profound scholar, a thoroughly-read 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 217 



theologian, and a master of strong, nervous, manly English ; 
he was a brilliant poet, some of his hymns having no compe- 
titors but the best of Watts and Wesley ; and he was a 
gentleman of deep and fervent piety, his diary being full of 
proofs of his devotedness to the cause of his Lord and Mas- 
ter. The rank virulence and vulgarity of his style, when 
writing against Mr. Wesley and his doctrines, have made a 
very different impression of his religious character upon the 
Methodists as a body, and upon the majority of even his 
Calvinistic friends ; but it gives me satisfaction to say, that, in 
spite of all his offendings in his controversial works, he must 
be regarded as one of the most sincerely and deeply pious 
ministers ever raised up in the Church of England. His 
latest English biographer, quoting from his diary, gives 
numerous examples of the fervor of his religious spirit : "At 
night," says Toplady, in a record he makes of one of his 
laborious days, " before I betook myself to rest, I was enabled 
to act faith very strongly on the promises. It was as if I 
had held a conversation with God. He assured me of his 
faithfulness, and I trusted him. It was whispered to my 
soul, ' Thou shalt find me faithful my soul answered, 
4 Lord I believe it ; I take thee at thy word.' This, I am 
certain, w r as more than fancy. It was too sweet, too clear, 
too powerful to be the daughter of imagination. There was 
a nescio quid divini, attended w T ith joy unspeakable, as much 
superior to all the sensations excited by earthly comforts, as 
the heavens are higher than the earth. Besides, in my ex- 
periences of this kind, when tinder the immediate light of 
Gods presence within, my soul is, in great measure, passive, 
and lies open to the beams of the sun of righteousness. The 
acts of faith, love, and spiritual aspiration are subsequent to, 
and occasioned by, this unutterable reception of divine influ- 
ence. I bless my God, I know his inward voice — the still 
small whisper of his good Spirit — and can distinguish it 
from every other suggestion whatever. Lord, evermore 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THR 



give me this bread to eat, whi«h the world knoweth not 
of!" 

Toplady, in fact, was a believer in conversion, in instanta- 
neous conversion, and in that " sensible information," in that 
" whisper of the Spirit," so distinguishable from every other 
suggestion, which constituted the soul of Mr. Wesley's move- 
ment. He opposed Mr. "Wesley only on the ground of spe- 
culative doctrine, in respect to which Methodism had not 
then, and never has had since, any great concern. It is true, 
the Wesleyans regarded Calvinism as a great stone of 
stumbling and rock of offence in the way of the world's con- 
version ; and, for this reason, they replied to nearly every 
argument advanced by Toplady in its behalf ; but their an- 
t-agonist did not stop with argument. After having done 
what he could to demolish Arminianism, as he found it in the 
hands of the Wesleys, he went forward to attack their reli- 
gious character; he accused them, not of fanaticism — 
for he agreed with them as to the substance of practical 
religion — but of everything else derogatory to the reputation 
of a Christian. He wrote incessantly against them. The 
longest, ablest, and most temperate production of his pen, 
his Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church 
of England, hi two volumes octavo, may be taken as a speci- 
men of his style, when writing against Mr. Wesley, prior to 
the time when his wrath had been stirred to the bottom by 
Wesley's abridgment of his translation of Zan chins on Pre- 
destination ; and the judgment he therein passes upon the 
doctrines and designs of Methodism is more likely to have 
been his real judgment, his veritable opinion, than could be 
found in the treatises which were written after he had been 
stung to the heart by the cool but unsparing logic of Sellon, 
Fletcher and their fellow-defenders of the Wesleyan system. 
It must be remembered, too, that Toplady was the champion, 
and hence the representative, of the Calvinistic opinion of 
Wesleyanism during his generation ; and that opinion, 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 219 

started by the Hutton slanders, and aggravated by the inter- 
mixtures of doctrinal jealousy and sectarian resentment, was 
spread by the Calvinistic divines over the greater part of 
Europe. 

According to this Calvinistic opinion, Methodism was 
everything heterodox in doctrine, corrupt in design, and dis- 
astrous to the good of the world in moral tendency. The 
author and abettors of Methodism, with all their sacrifices 
and sufferings, were nothing better than the author and 
abettors of rank imposition, or of a mixture of fanaticism, 
deviltry and madness. In the advertisement to the before- 
mentioned treatise, Mr. Toplady gives judgment of their 
moral character very clearly: "I foresee," he says, "one 
objection in particular, to which the ensuing work is liable, 
viz. : that the two Pelagian Methodists, namely, Mr. John 
Wesley and Mr. Walter Sellon, whose fraudulent perversions 
of truth, facts, and common sense gave the first occasion to 
the present undertaking, ' are not persons of sufficient conse- 
quence to merit so large and explicit a refutation.' I ac 
knowledge the propriety and the force of this remark. It 
cannot be denied that the Church of England has seldom, if 
ever (a.t least since the civil wars) been arraigned, tried 
and condemned by a pair of such insignificant adversaries. 
Yet, though the men themselves are of no importance, the 
Church and her doctrines are of much : which consideration 
has weight enough with me, not only to warrant the design 
and extent of the following vindication, but also to justify 
any future attempts of the same kind, which the continued 
perverseness of the said discomfitted Methodists may render 
needful. I mean, in case the united labors of that junto 
should be able to squeeze forth anything which may carry a 
face of argument, # for otherwise, I have some thoughts of 
consigning them to the peaceable enjoyment of that con- 
tempt and neglect due to their inaliee and incapacity. Lord 
Bolingbroke somewhere observes, that 'to have the last 



220 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



word is the privilege of bad writers ' — a privilege which I 
shall never envy them. Mr. Wesley and his adherents are, 
in general, so excessively scurrilous and abusive, that con- 
tending with them resembles fighting with chimney-sweepers, 
or bathing in a mud-pool!" 1 

Mr. Toplady's estimate of Methodism, and of the character 
of its supporters, is to be found also in the following quota- 
tion : "In the summer of 1771, a Mr. "Walter Sellon (wlio 
stands in the same relation to Mr. John Wesley as Celestius 
did to Pelagius, and Bertius to Arminius, viz. : of retainer- 
general and white- washer in ordinary) hands a production 
into the world, designed to prove, that Arminianism and the 
Church of England are as closely connected as the said 
Messieurs Walter and John are with each other. The piece 
itself is the joint offspring of the two associated heroes. As, 
therefore, in its fabrication, those gentlemen were united, 
even so in its confutation they shall not be parted. Armi- 
nianism is their mutual Dulcinea del Toboso. And, contrary 
to what is usually observed among co-enamoratos, their at- 
tention to the same favorite object creates no jealousy, no 
uneasiness or rivalship between themselves. Highrnounted 
on Pine's Rosinante, forth sallies Mr. John from Wine-street, 
Bristol, brandishing his reed, and vowing vengeance 
against all who will not fall down and worship the Dutch 
image [Arminius] which he has set up. With almost an 
equal plenitude of zeal and prowess, forth trots Mr. Walter 
from Ave-maria Lane, low-mounted on Cabe's halting dapple. 
The knight and the squire having met at the rendezvous ap- 
pointed, the former prances forward, and, with as much 
haste as the limping steed will permit, doth trusty Walter 
amble after his master." 8 

1 Toplady's Works, vol. i., pp. 166-167. 

2 Toplady's Works, vol. i., pp. 170-171. The author tells us in a foot- 
note to page 171 what he means by Wesley's setting up the Dutch image: 
" Pelagianism," he says, " was revived in Holland under the new name of 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



221 



This is certainly quite a plain rebuke ; but the author justifies 
his severity of style from the example of the Saviour : " It is 
not necessary to be timid in order to be meek. There is a 
false meekness as well as a false charity. Genuine charity, 
according to the Apostle's description of it, rejoiceth in the 
truth. The conduct of our Lord himself, and of the first 
disciples, on various occasions, demonstrated, that it is no 
part of Christian candor to hew millstones with a feather. 
Rebuke them sharply (arroroficjc, cuttingly) says the Apostle, 
concerning the depravers of doctrinal Christianity : wish well 
to their persons, but give no quarter to their errors. The 
world have long seen, that unmixed politeness, condescending 
generosity, and the most conciliating benevolence can no 
more soften Mr. Wesley's rugged rudeness, than the melody 
of David's harp could lay the north wind, or still the raging 
of the sea." The apology, however, contains a judgment. 
Wesleyanism, it seems, was regarded by Mr. Toplady and his 
supporters as a depravity of the Christian religion, as a rank 
and rude sort of heresy of the lowest and most virulent char- 
acter ; and it was proper, therefore, to treat it as St. Paul 
authorized his fellow-laborers to treat the vilest apostasy and 
hypocrisy of their generation. Such, in fact, was the treat- 
ment given to Methodism by these belligerent divines, and 
by the public opinion which they manufactured. 

Occasionally, it is true, there would be found a man too just 
by nature to permit such unmerited reproach to be cast upon 
the Wesleyans without a show of candor ; but the warm- 
blooded controversialist saw enough of evil in Methodism, and 
in its supporters, to drown all sense of right and wrong in 
relation to them : " To occupy the place of argument," 
says he, "it has been alleged that 'Mr. Wesley is an old 

Arminianism, toward the beginning of the last century." Methodism, 
therefore, according to the Calvinistic judgment of that day, is Pelagian- 
ism, though one of its articles of religion comdemns it in terms and by 
name ! 



■222 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



man ;' and the Church of Rome is still older. Is that any 
reason why the enormities, either of the mother or the son, 
should pass unchastised ? It has also been suggested that 
4 Mr. Wesley is a very laborious man not more laborious, I 
presume, than a certain active being, who is said to go to and 
fro in the earth, and walk up and down in it : nor yet more 
laborious, I should imagine, than certain ancient sectarians, 
concerning whom it was long ago said : ' Wo unto you 
scribes, pharisees, hypocrites ; for ye compass sea and land to 
make one proselyte :' nor by any means so usefully laborious 
as a certain diligent member of the community, respecting 
whose variety of occupations the public have lately received 
the following intelligence : 4 The truth of the following 
instance of industry may be depended on : a poor man, with 
a large family, now cries milk every morning in Lothbury 
and the neighborhood of the Royal Exchange ; at eleven, he 
wheels about a barrow of potatoes ; at one, he cleans shoes 
at the Exchauge ; after dinner, cries milk again ; in the even- 
ing, sells sprats; and at night, finishes the measure of his 
labor as a watchman.' Mr. Sellon, moreover, reminds me 
that 4 while the shepherds are quarreling, the wolf gets 
into the sheepfold, not impossible : but it so happens that the 
present quarrel is not among the shepherds, but with the 
4 Wolf 9 himself ; which quarrel is warranted by every maxim 
of pastoral meekness and fidelity. I am further told that, 
4 while I am be-rating the Arminians, Rome and the devil 
laugh in their sleeves.' Admitting that Mr. Sellon might 
derive this anecdote from the fountain-head, the parties them- 
selves [the Arminians and the devil], yet, as neither they 
[the Arminians and the devil] nor he [Mr. Sellon] are very 
conspicuous for veracity, I construe the intelligence by the 
rule of reverse, though authenticated by the deposition of 
their right trusty and well-beloved cousin and counsellor [Mr. 
Wesley]. Once more, I am charged with 4 excessive supercili- 
ousness and majesty of pride :' and why not charged with 



CHARACTER, AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 223 



having seven heads and ten horns, and a tail as long as a bell- 
rope ? After all, what has my pride, or my humility, to do 
with the argument in hand? Whether I am haughty, or 
meek, is of no more consequence either to that, or to the 
public, than whether I am tall or short : however, I am at 
this very time giving one proof that my ' majesty of pride ' 
can stoop — stoop even to ventilate the impertinences of Mr. 
Sellon. But, however frivolous his cavils, the principles for 
which he contends are of the most pernicious nature and 
tendency. I must repeat what already seems to have given 
him so much offence, that Arminianism came from Rome and 
leads thither again. ' " Toplady was convinced, on a review 
of what he had written against Mr. Wesley, that his objec- 
tions were not only too numerous, but contradictory ; and, 
therefore, to keep up an appearance of consistency, he com- 
pares Methodism to the image of the king of Babylon : 
" Your scheme of doctrines reminds me of the feet of a cer- 
tain visionary image, which, the sacred penmen acquaint us, 
seemed to be composed of iron and clay : heterogeneous mate- 
rials, which may, indeed, be put together, but will never 
incorporate with each other." Not contented with this com- 
parison, which was too dignified to suit his style of feeling 
in relation to the subject, he tries his hand again : " Some- 
what like the necromantic soup, of which you have probably 
read in the tragedy of Macbeth : your doctrines may be stirred 
into a chaotic jumble, but witchcraft itself would strive in 
vain to bring them into coalition." 3 

In this same strain, the champion of Calvinism in Great 
Britain goes on, through nearly the whole of his Hfe-time, 
defaming the Wesleyan system and the character of its 
founder and adherents. He brings every conceivable accu- 
sation against them. So low was his opinion of Methodism, 
and of its author, that he shrunk not from using the grossest 



s Toplady's Works, vol. v., p. 323» 



224 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



terms respecting them, in one place charging the Methodists 
with being semi-papists, in another accusing them of Jacobin- 
ism, and in another making the venerable father of this move- 
ment a blasphemer and a liar : " Without the least heat, or 
emotion, I plainly say Mr. Wesley lies." 4 

Such language, I know, will be regarded as sufficient proof 
that Mr. Toplady was not the good man I have represented 
him. But the key to this sort of treatment must not be 
neglected. This representative of Calvinism honestly re- 
garded Wesleyanism as the work of the devil and the Wes- 
leys as the devil's leading emissaries in Great Britain ; and 
to tell the father of lies of his darling sin, or to accuse him 
and his supporters of any of their crimes, could not be itself 
a crime in the opinion of so warm a controversialist. The 
Roman idea, too, that no good Christian would be called to 
account for any severity against heretics, had not then left 
the public mind in the most enlightened European countries, 
and was expressly acknowledged by this Calvinistic minister 
of the Church of England : " Bad works," he says distinctly, 
" if done to heretics, are transubstantiated into good ones." 5 

His sincerity, at all events, in his controversy with Mr. 
Wesley and the Methodists, is not for one moment to be 
doubted. Methodism was a schism ; it was a heresy ; it was 
a rebellion raised against true religion under satanic influence ; 
it was producing a wide and most baneful effect on the 
honest industrial classes of Great Britain ; it Avas the duty of 
every good minister, of every well-wisher of the race, to 
oppose it, to persecute it, to annihilate or expel it ; and the 
necessary means would not be too closely scrutinized by a 
just God, who must hold it in still deeper hatred, as his com- 
prehension of its diabolical character and tendencies was the 
more perfect. The author of it, however, was a human 
being ; he was a man perhaps not entirely given over to the 



4 Toplady's Works, vol. v., p. 413. 6 Toplady's Works, vol. v., p. 357. 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 225 

devil by any conscious act ; there might be hope of his re- 
covery even on Calvinistic principles, which, floating between 
free will and fixed fate, leave a sort of indefinable and con- 
tradictory possibility of salvation to those who are found 
fio-htino- for a season against the decrees of God : he might 
be prayed for, at least, as prayer is often but the expression 
of desire held in meek reliance upon whatever may turn out 
to have been the established will of Providence ; and, con- 
sequently, this rank Calvinist, this Coryphaeus of the Church 
of England, after lifting his heart to Heaven for the conver- 
sion of the venerable Wesley, addresses him in terms of 
mingled severity and concern : " Time, sir, I am informed," 
says the writer, " has already whitened your locks ; and the 
hour must shortly come, which will transmit you to the 
Tribunal of that God, on whose sovereignty a great part of 
your life has been one continued assault. At that bar, I too 
must hold up my hand. Omniscience only can tell which of 
us shall first appear before the Judge of all. I shortly may, 
you shortly must. The part you have been permitted to act 
in the religions world, will sooner or later sit heavy on your 
mind. ' Mixed in the warm converse of life, we think with 
men : on a death-bed, with God.' Depend upon it, a period 
will arrive when the Father's electing mercy, and the Mes- 
siah's adorable righteousness, will appear in your eyes, even 
in yours, to be the only safe anchorage for a dying sinner. 
I mean, unless you are actually given over to final obdura- 
tion !" 6 

The same man, indeed, who could hold such opinions of 
Mr. Wesley, who could entitle one work written in opposition 
to him A Caveat against Unsound Doctrine, in which the 
author (to use his own words) u fixes his foot on Arminianism 
as being, in its several branches, the gangrene of the Pro- 
testant churches and the predominant evil of the day," and 



6 Toplady's Works, vol. v., p. 439. 
10* 



226 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



another An Old Fox Tarred and Feathered, could also call 
for the mercy of an offended God to rest upon the miserable 
heretic, and then retire to his closet and sing the real lan- 
guage of his heart under a higher and holier inspiration : 

" Rock of ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in thee ; 
Let the water and the blood, 
From thy wounded side which flowed, 
Be of sin the double cure — 
Save from wrath and make me pure ! ' 

The explanation of it all is this : that, in the view of Mr. 
Toplady, and of the religious world in general at that day, 
Methodism was a movement set on foot at the instigation of 
the devil, made up of a mixture of many of the most aban- 
doned heresies, and propagated by men in whose composi- 
tion ignorance, irreverence, irreligion, ambition, and purposed 
opposition to the will of God, were the chief ingredients ! 

And this was the general opinion of Methodism, at least 
among the Calvinists of Great Britain, and quite extensively 
in the Church of England, from the days of Toplady till the 
period (1807 — 1810) of the next systematic attack upon it by 
the Rev. Sidney Smith in the Edinburgh Review. Between 
the two periods, two or three scores of commonplace works 
had been sent into the world against it. Some, like Bishop 
Lavington's treatise, had made it out to be nothing but a 
covert revival of popery, in which Mr. Wesley was the con- 
fidential agent of the Roman pontiff against the harmony and 
integrity of the Church of England. Others, like Ingram's 
Causes of the Increase of Methodism, unwilling to ascribe to 
it the dignity of being the work of so illustrious a personage 
as a bishop of Rome, denounced Wesley and his adherents as 
a set of deluded fanatics, or commiserable lunatics, whose stu- 
pidity of intellect was balanced only by the vulgarity of their 
social standing. After the death of Toplady, which occurred 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



in about seven years from the time of his address to Mr. 
"Wesley, leaving the man he had so warned of his near approach 
to death to survive himself for about fourteen years, the 
memoirs of the champion of Calvinism in the Church of 
England were published ; and, in that production, an esti- 
mate is given of the author of Methodism which was still 
quite commonly received by his opponents in England : "His 
understanding, strictly speaking, was but ordinary. His 
imagination was fertile in littleness. The reader is disturbed 
and disgusted by the indistinctness of his ideas, and the incon- 
clusiveness of his reasonings, the glaring misrepresentations 
and plagiarisms of his pages. His arguments have been 
made up of undigested materials, heterogeneous and repug- 
nant, without either shape or form ; the frivolousness of their 
design and application have been completely destroyed by 
being duly set in array against each other. If a prize had 
been given to dullness, and the most superlative conceit, this 
gentleman might have started with the certainty of triumph. 
His resentment toward those who differed from him was 
intense. His self-importance was astonishing, so that no 
reprehension, given in ever so mild a way, could instruct 
him." Some years subsequent to this first biography of Mr. 
Toplady, the celebrated Dr. Pringle wrote another, in which 
he seems to hint that his hero's extravagance of language 
must be softened a little in order to making it consistent with 
the truth : " It seems to have been his [Toplady's] favorite 
game [to scourge Methodism] : and whenever it started, he 
followed the chase till he run it down. So fully was he 
versed in this controversy, that he never seems more master 
of his subject, than when dissecting and confuting Arminian- 
ism. Many a sore drubbing poor Mr. "Wesley and his adhe- 
rents received from his able pen," And yet, this more 
candid writer would not quite subscribe to the intellectual 
rank awarded the miserable heretic by his predecessor : 
"This, xo say the least" — in reply to the language of the 



228 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



first biographer — " is not the language of either soberness or 
truth. John Wesley (candor should have made even his 
keenest opponents allow) gave may proofs of great acuteness, 
learning and piety." There were many, perhaps, who would 
have indorsed the learning and the acuteness of Mr. Wesley, 
but who would have suffered torture before consenting to offer 
any compliments to his piety. From the day of his return 
from Georgia to the day of his decease, a period of over half 
a century, he had been so systematically and energetically 
defamed, that the majority of the people of England not per- 
sonally acquainted with him were at least suspicious of his 
moral character; and his opponents well knew that to blacken 
his personal reputation was the same tiling, in its popular 
effect, as the answering of his arguments and the uprooting 
of his influence. The consequence was, that England had 
never seen the man against whom there had been leveled so 
many, so various, and so sweeping and unanswerable slan- 
ders. The present generation cannot realize the amount of 
abuse heaped upon the head of the first Methodist. He was 
slandered in relation to his " matrimonial intercourse " with 
Miss Hopkey of Savannah ; he was slandered respecting his 
treatment of his own wife ; he was slandered in regard to 
his neglect of his father's family ; he was slandered as to 
what he allowed and disallowed among his associates and 
followers ; and tales were constantly put into circulation, 
either from his antagonists in respect to his own character 
and conduct, or as coming from him concerning the character 
and conduct of those opposing him. As a single specimen, I 
will refer the reader to the published letters of Sir Richard 
Hill, one of Toplady's warm admirers and defenders. After 
the demise of Toplady, a story arose that he had, on his death- 
bed, recanted all he had written and said in opposition to Mr. 
Wesley, and that, in spite of this mark of repentance, he had 
died in despair and with the rankest blasphemy upon his 
lips. 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 229 

This gossip, plainly a falsehood, and evidently manu- 
factured for the very purpose of being palmed off as a Me- 
thodist slander upon the champion of Calvinism in England, 
was reported as having started with Mr. Wesley. Sir 
Richard, on hearing of it, and estimating Mr. Wesley so low 
as to imagine him capable of such a piece of infamy, pub- 
lished a letter in the General Advertiser, Friday, the 18th 
October, 1*779, charging him with the fabrication of the 
story. Mr. Wesley was used to these public attacks and 
made no answer; and on the 29th of November, 1779, there 
appeared in the magazines of England a second letter from 
the same gentleman, reiterating the same charge of de- 
famation. The first communication was anonymous; the 
second was signed ; and it may now be read and preserved 
as a fair specimen of the unfavorable judgment passed upon 
Methodism, and upon all connected with it, between the de- 
cease of Toplady and the second persecution of the Metho- 
dists originated by Sydney Smith : " The cause of my thus 
publicly addressing you," says Sir Richard in the opening sen- 
tence of his second letter, " is owing to an information I 
received, that you wished to know who was the author of a 
letter, which appeared in the General Advertiser, on Friday 
the 18th of October last, wherein were some queries put to 
you concerning certain reports, which it was supposed you 
had spread, relative to the illness and death of the late Mr. 
Augustus Toplady. I was further given to understand, that 
you had declared your intention of answering that letter, if 
the writer would annex his name to it. This being the case, 
though no name can at all alter facts, yet as I really wish to 
be rightly informed myself, and as the reports which have 
been propagated about Mr. Toplady have much staggered 
and grieved many serious Christians, I now (under my real 
signature) beg with all plainness, and with no other design 
than that the real truth may be known, again to propound 
the same questions to you which were put in that letter, of 



230 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



which I confess myself to have been the sole author. And as 
I hear you have been pleased to call the letter a scurrilous 
one, I should be glad if you would point out to me wherein 
that scurrility consists ; for though it were anonymous, I am 
not in the least conscious that there is anything in it un- 
becoming that respect, which might be due to a gentleman 
of your venerable age and function ; and when you have 
shown me wherein I have been culpable, I shall then, readily 
and submissively, ask your pardon. The letter itself I shall 
annex to this. The queries contained in it may be reduced 
to the following : 

" 1. Did you, sir, or did you not, tell Mr. Thomas Robinson 
of Hilderthorpe, near Bridlington in Yorkshire, that Mr. 
Toplady died in black despair, blaspheming ; and that a 
greater imposition never was imposed on the public than 
that published by his friends relative to his death ? 

" 2. Did you ever tell the same in substance to the Rev. 
Mr. Greaves, curate to Mr. Fletcher of Madeley, or to any 
other person ? 

"3. Did you, or did you not, say that none of Mr. Top- 
lady's friends were permitted to see him during his illness ?" 

After stating the reasons why he had been led to put these 
interrogatories to Mr. Wesley, the chief of which was a 
letter of inquiry from a Mr. Gawkrodger, the writer pro- 
ceeds: "Methinks, sir, this letter breathes the language of real 
Christianity, and of a heart deeply concerned and interested 
in the welfare of one from whose works I know that Mr. G. 
had received the highest delight and satisfaction. He had 
read the account of Mr. Toplady's illness and death ; he re- 
joiced to see the doctrines of the Gospel confirmed and 
established in the experience of that eminent servant of 
Jesus Christ ; and his own heart found strong consolation 
whilst he meditated on the triumphant victory which his 
late brother in the ministry had obtained over the king of 
terrors, through faith in our glorious Immanuel. 



CHAKACTEB AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



231 



" Amidst these views and meditations he is told by a 
pious friend and neighbor of his, that Mr. John Wesley had 
assured him that Mr. Toplady died blaspheming, in black 
despair ; that none of his friends were permitted to see him 
in his illness ; and that the account of his death, published 
by his friends, was a gross imposition on the public ; and 
that a preacher of Mr. Wesley's had moreover asserted the 
same, with this further circumstance, that the person who 
attended Mr. Toplady in his illness, struck with horror at 
his awful departure, had joined the Methodists. 

" Overwhelmed with grief and amazement at this declara- 
tion, and the authority produced in defence of it (an autho- 
rity which he dares not call in question), he writes to me to 
be further informed in the matter. Upon the receipt of this 
letter, I thought it best to go to the fountain-head, in order 
to investigate the truth, and therefore called upon you, in 
the public papers, to know whether you did, or did not, 
assert the things which are charged upon you. If you did 
not assert them, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Greaves, and several 
other persons, have treated you in a manner the most injuri- 
ous, by making use of the sanction of your name for the pro. 
pagation of a most wicked and malicious lie. If you did 
assert them, either you had or had not authority for your 
assertions ; if you had no authority, then you, yourself, must 
have been the inventor of them. If you had authority, then 
you must know whence that authority came. In order, 
therefore, to exculpate your own character before the world, 
be pleased now to name that authority. Tell us how you 
became so well acquainted with what passed in Mr. Top- 
lady's sick-chamber, and on his dying bed, when even his 
most dear and intimate friends were not permitted to see 
him ? Did his nurse, Mrs. Stirling, who attended him, and 
was with him when he died, communicate this intelligence ? 
I hear she has called upon you on purpose to vindicate her- 
self from the charge of any such assertion, and is ready to 



232 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



declare to all the world, that throughout Mr. Toplady's long 
illness to the hour of his dissolution, prayer and praise, joy 
and triumph in the God of his salvation, were the continual 
employments of his lips and heart. But as your conduct 
will make one of the many friends who were permitted to 
see Mr. Toplady in his illness, think it necessary to give the 
public some further particulars relative to the state of his 
soul in that trying season, I shall only in this place present 
you with a short abstract from a letter which I received from 
a worthy friend of Mr. Toplady's, soon after his departure." 
The extract next succeeds ; and then comes the real drift of 
all this display of words — a tirade on Mr. Wesley and his 
movement — which was the only real object of this lawyer- 
like communication : " We can now look to no other source 
from whence these reports may have flowed, than to the 
most deliberate malice of Mr. Toplady's avowed foes, among 
whom, notwithstanding your continual preaching about 
' love, love, peace, peace, my brethren^ I fear you are chief. 
Till, therefore, you produce your authority for what you told 
Mr. Thomas Robinson, and others, I have full right, nay, I 
am absolutely necessitated to fix upon you, Rev. sir, as the 
raiser and fabricator of this most nefarious report, which I 
cannot look upon as a common falsity, but as a most mali- 
cious attempt to invalidate and set aside the testimony 
which God, the Eternal Spirit himself, was pleased to bear 
to his own truth, and to his own w r ork, upon the heart of a 
dying believer, and even to turn that testimony into the 
blasphemies of Satan. And in this view of it, how far short 
it falls of the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, 
must be left to your awful consideration ! 

" When one Jane Cowper, a person belonging to your 
societies, died, you were ready enough to give your impri- 
matur and recommendation to every wild flight of fancy she 
uttered, as ' all strong, sterling sense, strictly agreeable to 
Bound reason.' 4 Here,' says Mr. Wesley in his preface, 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 233 

1 are no extravagant flights, no mystic reveries, no unscriptu- 
ral enthusiasm. The sentiments are all just and noble." The 
cause is plain. The Lord, it seems, had promised this Jane 
Cowper 4 that Mr. John Wesley's latter works should exceed 
his former ; therefore, she must be canonized ; but Mr. Top- 
lady, in his dying avowal, had borne his open testimony both 
against Mr. Wesley and his principles ; therefore he must be 
sent blaspheming and despairing into the bottomless pit. 
Behold, sir, what self partiality and a desire to make known 
your own importance leads you to ! The like spirit runs 
through all your publications, whether sermons, journals, 
appeals, preservatives, Arminian magazines, etc. etc., in all 
of which, it is too evident, that the geand design is that 
.of trumpeting forth your oion praises. Tedious and fulsome 
as this appears in the eyes of men of sense and judgment, 
yet a gentleman of Mr. Wesley's cunning and subtlety can 
from hence suck no small advantage, as there are multitudes 
amongst your own people, who, through a blind attachment 
to your person, and a no less blind zeal to promote your inter- 
ests, look upon it as perfectly right and proper, and are at 
all times, and upon all occasions, ready to pay the most impli- 
cit obedience to your ipse dixits, and to believe, or disbe- 
lieve, just as you would have them. But I have nothing to 
do with such bigots: to endeavor to open their eyes by 
argument would be as vain as to attempt to wash the Ethio- 
pian white, or to change the leopard's spots. There are, 
however, many persons of good sense and true piety in your 
societies, who, in spite of all your artifices, begin to form a 
judgment of you according to facts. It is for the 
benefit of such persons, as well as to vindicate the memory 
of a departed saint from your foul aspersions, that you are 
presented with this epistle, though I confess I was some- 
time before I could bring myself to write or print it. I con- 
sidered that a misjudging, prejudiced world would be happy to 
take advantage from its contents, and to cry, ' there, there, so 



234 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



-would we have it ; the Methodists are all fallen together by 
the ears and are discharging their artillery at one another.' 
I considered again that, as to expose you was not my motive, 
so to bring you to any submission was never in human 
power. I had well-nigh resolved to be silent. On the other 
hand, I perceived that the sealing testimony, which God 
vouchsafed to his own truths in the experience of Mr. Top- 
lady, during his illness, and at the time of his death, was not 
only denied by you, but even construed into a gross imposi- 
tion of his friends to deceive the public and thereby the 
good effects which might justly have been hoped for were in 
great measure counteracted ; that his enemies were hardened 
against the truths he maintained and so ably vindicated ; and 
even his friends staggered by the shocking accounts forged 
and propagated ; I say, when I saw this to be the case, I 
determined (to adopt an expression of your own) to 1 write 
and print.' I said, let God be true and every man a liar. 
If you make no reply, I cannot avoid construing your silence 
into an acquiescence of your being guilty of the matter 
brought against you. If you do ' write and print,' in answer, 
let me beg you, for once to avoid quibbles and evasions." 7 

7 An account of the life and writings of the Iter. Augustus Montague 
Toplady, prefixed to his works, vol. i. pp. 122-131. 

This, certainly, is very plain and pungent language for one gentleman 
to employ and publish in relation to another. It was a charge, not only 
against the moral character of Mr. "Wesley, but against the morality of a 
very large majority of his people. Methodism itself, in fact, was involved 
by it in the sin of slander. It was slander, too, under the most degrading 
circumstances, as it was leveled against a gentleman who had long stood 
before the world as the leading opponent of the "Wesleyan system ; and 
the public were sure to hold Mr. Wesley to the alternative, either of prov- 
ing the truth of the story thus laid at his door, or of denying that he had 
had any connection with it. ^Neither of these things, however, did Mr. 
Wesley do. He did not undertake to maintain the truth of the rumor of 
Mr. Toplady's recantation ; for there was no truth in it ; and Mr. Wesley 
was probably as happy as any man in England to know that his antagonist 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



235 



With all this severity of Sir Richard Hill, the language of 
his attack is considerably more mild than that of his client ; 
and each successive biographer of Toplady, in the reviews of 

had died in the triumphs of supporting faith. His joy over this glorious 
death was not diminished, indeed, when he came to know that one of the 
last acts of the dying man was a distinct and emphatic approval of every 
line and word uttered against the Wesleyan movement. " So certain and 
so satisfied am I of the truth of all that I have ever written, that, were I 
now sitting up in my dying bed, with a pen and ink in my hand, and all 
the religious and controversial writings I ever published (and more 
especially those relating to Mr. John Wesley and the Arminian contro- 
versy), whether respecting facts or doctrines, could at once be displayed 
to my view, I should not strike out a single line relative to him or them." 
This solemn act of self-approval, in fact, was well known to Mr. Wesley at 
the time he was addressed by Sir Richard Hill ; and his opponents in 
Great Britain were consequently all the more surprised that he did not, 
under his own hand, clear himself from the crime laid against him. It has 
been a wonder ever since, at least to many people, why Mr. Wesley did 
not come out and say, either that he had reported no such rumor against 
Mr. Toplady, or that he had done so upon authority found to be unre- 
liable, or that there was some mistake altogether in connecting his name 
with so foul a slander. But there is no difficulty in his silence to a person 
who has had any experience similar to that of Mr. Wesley. A high- 
minded man, conscious of more than ordinary respect to his personal 
character, while he would gladly correct any slight misunderstanding in 
relation to his conduct, scorns to enter the lists of personal controversy 
against those who, from simple malice or for party purposes, charge him 
with crimes which his whole previous life is sufficient to prove false. Such 
a man knows, too, that the accuser will always manage to have the last 
word ; and it generally happens that a personal newspaper attack, or a 
popular rumor, especially if without foundation, becomes more and more 
virulent as it proceeds. Mr. Wesley, therefore, with his characteristic 
prudence, made no reply to the partisan epistles of Sir Richard Hill. Like 
his Lord and Master under similar circumstances, " he answered to never a 
word •" like Franklin and Washington, when accused by their personal 
enemies of treason, he relied on the overwhelming but self-denying argu- 
ment of silence for his defense ; and the consequence has been, that he 
saved his time for better purposes, and his dignity from so mean a contact, 
granting the favor of oblivion to his opponents, and maintaining his own 



236 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



this controversy called for by the nature of the case, com- 
pelled by a sense of justice, or by the progress of public sen- 
timent, expressed a yet more favorable ojnnion of Wesley and 
his movement. Wesley died in 1791, generally respected in 
Great Britain as a sincere Christian, but as the founder of 
a sect of fanatics, who, ignorant and presumptuous, were sup- 
posed to arrogate all earnest Christianity to themselves. This 
was the general judgment of the intelligent classes, with only 
occasional individual exceptions, till the opening of the pre- 
sent century. In the halls of the English universities, even 
in those of Oxford, where John Wesley had been a noted 
fellow of his College, and in those of every literary institution 
of the country, Methodism was always spoken of as a sorry 
delusion of a well-read and well-meaning man. This was its 
established reputation at court, in parliament, in episcopal 
palaces, in the manses of charitable clergymen, in every com- 
mercial circle, among all the guilds of tradesmen and mecha- 
nics, and so down to the common level of the laboring 
multitude. This was its reputation at the time of the found- 
ing of the Edinburgh Review; and the founder of that 

position by keeping closely to his life's great object. This is the true 
wisdom, however difficult of practice, in nearly every case of defamation. 
The better part of mankind will not credit an infamous charge against a 
gentleman of good previous reputation, without something like a judicial 
examination, which is impossible to be had by a newspaper or popular 
setting forth of rumors ; they will, in the meantime, hold the propagators 
of defamation to a strict account for their nefarious business ; and their 
sympathies will be with the man whom these unlawful and generally 
interested and mercenary proceedings have been designed to injure. It is 
an old maxim, I know, that " a lie will travel a league while truth is 
putting on her boots ;" but the truth, conscious of itself, is not only 
endowed with the composure of innocence, but knows also that error, like 
the classic herald, will in the race outrun her breath. All good and true 
men depend more on what they know themselves to be, than on what the 
world, or any part of it, may think or say about them ; and when defamed^ 
silence is generally their strength. 



CHAKACTFR AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



237 



magazine, the Rev. Sidney Smith, a clergyman of the Church 
of England by profession, but a wit in fact, seeking as much 
as possible to strike the most responsive chord in the manage- 
ment of his columns, and. at the same time to gratify his 
clerical associates, opened his literary career with a most 
violent persecution of the Methodistic movement. Attri- 
buting the missionary operations of the day to the influence 
of Methodism, he began his work by a merciless assault on 
" Missionaries and Missions." His article was answered ; 
and he rejoined in still more sarcastic terms than he had 
employed at first. Then comes his celebrated review of 
the work of Robert Acklem Ingram, B.D., on the Causes of 
the Increase of Methodism, in which he concentrates all the 
power and brilliancy of his genius in the attempt to render 
ridiculous everything connected with the Wesleyan system. 
" Mr. Ingram," says the caustic reviewer, " has fallen into the 
common mistake of supposing his reader to be as well 
acquainted with his subject as he is himself, and has talked a 
great deal about dissenters, without giving us any distinct 
notions of the spirit which pervades these people — the objects 
they have in view — or the degree of talent which is to be 
found among them. To remedy this capital defect, we shall 
endeavor to set before the eyes of the reader a complete sec- 
tion of the tabernacle, and to present him with a near view 
of those sectaries, who are at present at work upon the des- 
truction of the orthodox churches, and are destined hereafter, 
perhaps, to act as conspicuous a part in public affairs, as the 
children of Sion did in the time of Cromwell." 

After stating the sources from which he derives his facts, 
he gives his definition of what he means by Methodism : " We 
shall use the general term of Methodism to designate these 
three classes of fanatics, not troubling ourselves to point out 
the finer shades and nicer discriminations of lunacy, but 
treating them all as in one general conspiracy against com- 
mon sense and rational orthodox Christianity." 



238 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



Methodism, therefore, in the eyes of that literary circle by 
which the Edinburgh Review was established and supported, 
was fanaticism, lunacy, not conscious deviltry, as asserted by 
its original opposers ; and the writer proceeds to deal out 
some twelve pages of the religious experiences of a great 
variety of persons calling themselves Methodists, collected 
from the leading Methodistic magazines of that day, in proof 
of his opinion of this religious denomination. The cases cited 
are all of that class, now so universally received and credited, 
but then novel and not understood, which show the possi- 
bility of a sudden conversion, of the special interposition of 
God in bringing individuals to this result, and of such force 
of an awakened conscience as would not suffer a person to 
take usury on money and perform other acts now generally 
condemned but at that time allowed. 

The next charge against the Wesleyan movement is that 
of arrogance. " The Methodists consider themselves as con- 
stituting a chosen and separate people, living in a land of 
atheists and voluptuaries. The expressions by which they 
designate their own sects are the dear people — the elect — the 
people of God. The rest of mankind are carnal people — the 
people of this world. The children of Israel were not more 
separated, through the favor of God, from the Egyptians, 
than the Methodists are, in their, own estimation, from the 
rest of mankind. We had hitherto supposed that the disci- 
ples of the established churches in England and in Scotland 
had been Christians, and that, after baptism, duly performed 
by the appointed minister, and participation in the customary 
worship of these two churches, Christianity was the religion 
of which they were to be considered as members. We see, 
however, in these publications, men of twenty or thirty years 
of age first called to a knowledge of Christ under a sermonhy 
the Rev. Mr. Venn, or first admitted into the church under 
a sermon by the Rev. Mr. Romaine. The apparent admis- 
sion turns out to have been a mere mockery, and the pseudo 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



239 



Christian to have no religion at all, till the business was 
really and effectually done under these sermons by Mr. Venn 
and Mr. Romaine." 

The reviewer then complains of the almost miraculous 
success of Methodism. He says that its propagators are 
industrious in their work beyond all competition ; that they 
stoop to such conversation with the common people as 
cannot fail to give them the command of the lower orders ; 
that the regular clergy could not descend to such popular prac- 
tices without such a loss to their personal dignity as would, 
" upon the whole and for a great number of years," be dis- 
astrous to religion ; and yet that, in spite of this apparent 
contradiction, they had gained an influence among the higher 
classes which threatened in time to take possession of the 
government : " We must remember," he says, " in addition 
to these trifling specimens of their active disposition, that the 
Methodists have found a powerful party in the House of 
Commons, who, by the neutrality which they affect and 
partly adhere to, are courted both by ministers and opposi- 
tion ; that they have gained complete possession of the India- 
House ; and under the pretence, or perhaps with the serious 
intention of educating young people for India, will take care 
to introduce (as much as they dare without provoking atten- 
tion) their own peculiar tenets. In fact," one thing must 
always be taken for granted respecting these people — that 
wherever they gain a foothold, or whatever be the institu- 
tions to which they give birth, proselytism will be their main 
object ; everything else is a mere instrument — this is their 
principal aim. When every proselyte is not only an addition 
to their temporal power, but when the act of conversion 
which gains a vote, saves (as they suppose) a soul from 
destruction — it is quite needless to state, that every faculty of 
their minds will be dedicated to this most important of all 
temporal and eternal concerns. Their attack upon the church 
is not merely confined to publications : it is generally under- 



240 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



stood that they have a very considerable fund for the pur- 
chase of livings, to which, of course, ministers of their own 
profession are always presented." 

The growth of Methodism had been so great, indeed, at 
the time when the Edinburgh Review began to thunder its 
broadsides upon it, that all England was astonished ; and the 
Rev. Sidney, who was something of a philosopher as well as 
wit, set himself to work, not only to give a general summary 
of its principles, but to present distinctly, under six separate 
heads, the leading causes of its wonderful success. Nothing 
can be more interesting, at this stage of the progress of 
Methodism in the world, than these strictures of the witty, 
caustic, critical, but philosophical and yet skeptical Sidney 
Smith : 

"1. It is obvious that this description of Christians enter- 
tain very erroneous and dangerous notions of the present 
judgments of God. A belief, that Providence interferes in all 
the little actions of our lives, refers all merit and demerit to 
bad and good fortune, and causes the successful man to be 
always considered as a good man, and the unhappy man as 
the object of divine vengeance. It furnishes ignorant and 
designing men with a power which is sure to be abused ; the 
cry of a judgment, a judgment, it is always easy to make, 
but not easy to resist. It encourages the grossest supersti- 
tions ; for if the Deity rewards and punishes on every slight 
occasion, it is quite impossible but that such a helpless being 
as man will set himself at work to discover the will of heaven in 
the appearance of outward nature, and to aj3ply all the pheno- 
mena of thunder, lightning, wind, and every striking appear- 
ance, to the regulation of his conduct, as the poor Methodist, 
when he rode into Piccadilly in a thunderstorm, and imagined 
that all the uproar of the elements was a mere hint to him 
not to preach at Romaine's chapel. Hence a great deal of 
t rror and a great deal of secret misery. This doctrine of a 



CHARACTER A2vD SUCCESS OF 3IETHODISM. 



24:1 



theocracy must necessarily place an excessive power in the 
hands of the clergy. It applies so instantly and so tremen- 
dously to men's hopes and fears, that it must make the priest 
omnipotent over the people, as it always has clone where it 
has been established. It has a great tendency to check 
human exertions, and to prevent the employment of those 
secondary means of effecting an object which Providence has 
placed in our power. The doctrine of the immediate and 
perpetual interference of divine Providence is not true. If 
two men travel the same road, the one to rob, the other to 
relieve a fellow-creature who is starving, will any but the 
most fanatic contend, that they do not both run the same 
chance of falling over a stone, and breaking their legs ? And 
is it not matter of fact that the robber often returns safe, and 
the just man sustains the injury ? Have not the soundest 
divines of both churches always urged this unequal distribu- 
tion of good and evil, in the present state, as one of the 
strongest natural arguments for a future state of retribution '? 
Have not they contended, and well and admirably contended, 
that the supposition of such a state is absolutely necessary to 
our notion of the justice of God— absolutely necessary to 
restore order to that moral confusion which we all observe 
and deplore in the present world ? The man who places 
religion upon a false basis is the greatest enemy to reli- 
gion. If victory is always to the just and good, how is the 
fortune of impious conquerors to be accounted, for ? Why 
do they erect dynasties and found families which last for 
centuries ? The reflecting mind whom you have instructed 
in this manner, and for present effect only, naturally comes 
upon you hereafter with difficulties of this sort ; he finds he 
has been deceived ; and you will soon discover that, in breed- 
ing up a, fanatic, you have unwittingly laid the foundation of 
an atheist. The honest and the orthodox method is to prepare 
young people for the world as it naturally exists ; to tell them* 
they will often find vice perfectly successful; virtue exposed 

11 



24:2 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



to a long train of afflictions; that they must bear this 
patiently and look to another world for its rectification. 

" 2. The second doctrine which it is necessary to notice 
among the Methodists is the doctrine of inward impulse and 
emotions, which, it is quite plain, must lead, if universally 
insisted upon and preached among the common people, to 
every species of folly and enormity. When a human being 
believes that his internal feelings are the monitions of God, 
and that these monitions must govern his conduct ; and 
when a great stress is purposely laid upon these inward feel- 
ings in all the discourses from the pulpit, it is of course 
impossible to say to what a pitch of extravagance it may not 
be carried, under the influence of such dangerous doctrines. 

44 3. The Methodists hate pleasures and amusements ; no 
theatre, no cards, no dancing, no punchinello, no dancing 
dogs, no blind fiddlers ; all the amusements of the rich and 
of the poor must disappear wherever these gloomy people 
get a footing. It is not the abuse of pleasure which they 
attack, but the interspersion of pleasure, however much it is 
guarded by good sense and moderation ; it is not only wicked 
to hear the licentious plays of Congreve, but wicked to hear 
Henry V. or the School for Scandal ; it is not only dissipated 
to run about to all the parties in London and Edinburgh — 
but dancing is not fit for any being loho is preparing him- 
self for eternity. Ennui, wretchedness, melancholy, groans, 
and sighs are the offerings which these unhappy men make 
to a Deity, who has covered the earth with gay colors, and 
scented it with rich perfumes, and shown us, by the plan and 
order of his works, that he has given to man something bet- 
ter than a bare existence, and scattered over his creation a 
thousand superfluous joys, which are totally unnecessary to 
the mere support of life. 

44 4. The Methodists lay very little stress upon practical 
righteousness. They do not say to their people, do not be 
deceitful ; do not be idle ; get rid of your bad passions ; or 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 243 

at least (if they do say these things) they say them very sel- 
dom. Not that they preach faith without works ; for if they 
told the people that they might rob and murder with impu- 
nity, the civil magistrate must be compelled to interfere with 
such doctrine ; but they say a great deal about faith, and very 
little about works. What are commonly called the myste- 
rious parts of our religion, are brought into the foreground, 
much more than the doctrines which lead to practice — and 
this among the lowest of the community. The Methodists 
have hitherto been accused of dissenting from the Church of 
England. This, so far as relates to mere subscription to 
articles, is not true ; but they differ in their choice of the 
articles upon which they dilate and expand, and to which 
they appear to give a preference, from the stress which they 
place upon them. There is nothing heretical in saying, that 
God sometimes intervenes with his special providence ; but 
these people differ from the established church in the degree 
in which they insist upon this doctrine. In the hands of a 
man of sense and education, it is a safe doctrine — in the 
management of the Methodists, we have seen how ridiculous 
and degrading it becomes. In the game manner, a clergy- 
man of the Church of England would not do his duty, if he 
did not insist upon the necessity of faith, as well as of good 
works ; but as he believes that it is much more easy to give 
credit to doctrines, than to live well, he labors most in those 
points where human nature is the most liable to prove defec- 
tive. Because he does so, he is accused of giving up the 
articles of his faith, by men who have their partialities also in 
doctrine, but partialities not founded upon the same sound 
discretion and knowledge of human nature. 

"5. The Methodists are always desirous of making men 
more religious than it is possible, from the constitution of 
human nature, to make them. If they could succeed as much 
as they wish to succeed, there would be at once an end of 
delving and spinning, and of every exertion of human indus- 



OUTSIDE SOIXTIOXS OF THE 



try. Men must eat, and drink, and work ; and if yon wish 
to fix upon them high and elevated notions, as the ordinary 
furniture of their minds, you do these two things — you drive 
men of warm temperament mad — and you introduce, in the 
rest of the world, a low and shocking familiarity with words 
and images, which every real friend to religion would wish 
to keep sacred : ' Tlxe friends of the dear Hedeemer who are 
in the habit of visiting the Isle of Thanet? Is it possible 
that this mixture of the most awful with the most familiar 
images, so common among Methodists now, and with the 
enthusiasts in the time of Cromwell, must not in the end 
divest religion of all the deep and solemn impressions which 
it is calculated to produce. In a man of common imagination 
(as we have before observed) the terror, and the feeling 
which is first excited, must necessarily be soon separated ; 
but, where the fervor of impression is long preserved, piety 
ends in bedlam. Accordingly, there is not a madhouse in 
England, where a considerable part of the patients have not 
been driven to insanity by the extravagance of these people. 
TTe cannot enter such places without seeing a number of 
honest artisans, covered with blankets, and calling themselves 
angels and apostles, who, if they had remained contented with 
the instruction of men of learning and education, would still 
have been sound masters of their own trades, sober Christians, 
and useful members of society. 

" 6. It is impossible not to observe how directly all the 
doctrine of the Methodists is calculated to gain power among 
the poor and ignorant. To say, that the Deity governs this 
world by general rules, and that we must wait for another 
and a final scene of existence, before vice meets with its 
merited punishment, and virtue with its merited reward ; to 
preach this up daily would not add a single votary to the 
tabernacle, nor sell a number of the Methodistical Magazine ; 
but to publish an account of a man who was cured of scrofula 
by a single sermon — of Providence destroying the inn-keeper 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OE METHODISM. 



245 



at Garstang for appointing a cock-fight near the tabernacle ; 
this promptness of judgment and immediate execution is so 
much like human justice, and so much better adapted to 
vulgar capacities, that the system is at once admitted, as soon 
as any one be found who is impudent or ignorant enough to 
teach it ; and, being once admitted, it produces too strong an 
effect upon the passions to be easily relinquished. The case 
is the same with the doctrine of inward impulse, or, as they 
term it, experience ; if you preach up to ploughmen and arti- 
sans, that every singular feeling which comes across them is 
a visitation of the Divine Spirit — can there be any difficulty, 
under the influence of this nonsense, in converting these sim- 
ple creatures into active and mysterious fools, and making them 
your slaves for life ? It is not possible to raise up any danger- 
ous enthusiasm by telling men to be just, and good, and chari- 
table ; but, keep this part of Christianity out of sight, and talk 
long and enthusiastically, before ignorant people, of the mys- 
teries of our religion, and you will not fail to attract a crowd 
of followers : — Verily, the tabernacle loveth not that which is 
simple, intelligible, and leadeth to good sound practice." 

Having pointed out the spirit, as he imagined, which per- 
vaded the Wesleyan revival, the reviewer proceeded to state 
the cause, or causes, of its prosperity and popularity : " The 
fanaticism so prevalent in the present day is one of those 
evils from which society is never wholly exempt, but which 
bursts out, at different periods, with peculiar violence, and 
sometimes overwhelms everything in its course. The last 
irruption took place about a century and a half ago, and 
destroyed both church and throne with its tremendous force. 
Though irresistible, it was short; enthusiasm spent its force — 
the usual reaction took place; and England was deluged with 
ribaldry and indecency, because it had been worried with 
fanatical restrictions. By degrees, however, it was found 
out, that orthodoxy and loyalty might be secured by other 



246 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



methods than licentious conduct and immodest conversation. 
The public morals improved ; and there appeared as much 
good sense and moderation upon the subject of religion, as 
ever can be expected from mankind in large masses. Still, 
however, the mischief which the Puritans had done was not 
forgotten ; a general suspicion prevailed of the dangers of 
religious enthusiasm ; and the fanatical preacher wanted his 
accustomed power among a people recently recovered from 
a religious war, and guarded by songs, proverbs, popular 
stories, and the general tide of humor and opinions, against 
all excesses of that nature. About the middle of the last cen- 
tury, however, the character of the genuine fanatic was a 
good deal forgotten, and the memory of the civil wars worn 
away ; the field was clear for extravagance in piety ; and 
causes, which must always produce an immense influence 
upon the mind of man, were left to their own unimpeded 
operations. Religion is so noble and powerful a considera- 
tion — it is so buoyant and insubmergible — that it may be 
made by fanatics to carry with it any degree of error and of 
perilous absurdity. In this instance, Messrs. Whitefield and 
Wesley happened to begin. They were men of considerable 
talents ; they observed the common decorums of life ; they 
did not run naked into the streets, or pretend to the prophet- 
ical character ; and therefore they were not committed to 
Newgate. They preached with great energy to weak people, 
who first stared, then listened, then believed — then felt the 
inward feeling of grace, and became as foolish as their teach- 
ers could possibly wish them to be : in short, folly ran its 
ancient course, and human nature evinced itself to be what 
it always has been under similar circumstances. The great 
and permanent cause, therefore, of the increase of Methodism 
is the cause which has given birth to fanaticism in all ages 

THE FACILITY OF MINGLING HUMAN ERRORS WITH THE 

FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF RELIGION." 8 

8 Edinburgh Review, vol. xi. pp. 341-350. I have taken the pains to 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



24:7 



This literary persecution of Methodism was not confined 
to the columns "of the Edinburgh Review. It ran through 
all the British and American periodicals of that day. 
Methodism was nothing in the world but fanaticism. It had 
worked its way out of the reputation of being the wicked- 
ness of a wily and deep impostor. Wesley was now a good 
but weak man ; his views were in the main according to the 
letter of revelation, but above and beyond its spirit ; and his 
followers were a set of poor, ignorant, unconscious victims 
of a species of religious lunacy. There was no intelligence 
among them. They did not read and try to comprehend the 
world they lived in, nor themselves even, but spent all the 
time they could spare from hard labor in sour devotion, hav- 
ing no amusement, no recreation, but the singing of psalms 

condense into this small space the substance of Mr. Smith's writings 
against Methodism; but I have by no means given a fair specimen of his 
rancor and scurrility. In a subsequent number of his Review (vol. xiv. p. 
40), he throws aside the assumed candor of his first assault, and reveals his 
true sentiments in a style of the coarsest vulgarity : " In routing out," says 
he, " a nest of consecrated cobblers, and in bringing to light such a peril- 
ous heap of trash as we were obliged to work through, in our articles upon 
Methodists and missionaries, we are generally conceived to have rendered 
a useful service to the cause of rational religion. Every one, however, 
at all acquainted with the true character of Methodism, must have known 
the extent of the abuse and misrepresentation to which we exposed our- 
selves in such a service. All this obloquy, however we were very willing 
to encounter, from our conviction of the necessity of exposing and cor- 
recting the growing evil of fanaticism. In spite of all misrepresentation, 
we have ever been, and ever shall be, the sincere friends of sober and 
rational Christianity. We are quite ready, if any fair opportunity occur, 
to defend it, to the best of our ability, from the tiger spring of infidelity ; 
and we are quite determined, if we can prevent such an evil, that it shall 
not be eaten up by the nasty and numerous vermin of Methodism." Such 
passages are frequent in these articles ; they show the heart of their 
author in relation to all evangelical religion ; for it must be remembered 
that Methodism, in his vocabulary, though then headed by the esley- 
ans, included the Puritans of Great Britain and America, and all denomi- 
nations of Christians who laid any stress on what they called conversion. 



248 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



and the making of loud prayers. This was the prevalent idea 
of the Wesleyan movement in Great Britain and in the 
United States, not only in the days of Sidney Smith, espe- 
cially among the educated classes ; but it continued to be 
the general idea of it, in the prouder circles of society, for a 
generation at least subsequent to the publication of these 
malignant articles. It was these articles, in fact, more than 
all the writings of Toplady, of Pringle, of Priestley, and of 
every previous opponent, which made this view of Method- 
ism the popular one on both sides of the Atlantic. This is 
now the prevailing opinion of Methodism, in Europe and on 
this continent, excepting in those places where it has had the 
opportunity and the power to make a demonstration of its 
real character. Nine individuals out of every ten, throughout 
the world, who have had no personal acquaintance with it, if 
asked to express their opinion of it in a single word, would 
say that they regarded it as a sort of successful fanaticism. 

There are exceptions, of course, from the number made up 
of the one in ten, in every latitude and longitude ; and there 
is occasionally to be found, among the more bigoted and less 
enlightened of its opponents, a solitary man, who, unwilling 
to show it the mercy of calling it a lunacy, goes back to the 
original charge of conscious and wicked imposition. There 
have been such singular characters all the way along through 
the several generations of its history; and there are a few 
still living, in England and in this country, who make Metho- 
dism, not a system of delusion simply, but a settled and 
determined course of irreligion, immorality, and deviltry of 
the boldest and rankest order,, It is only a few years ago 
that a book appeared in England, the purpose of which was 
to show that Wesley was a very wicked man, and that 
Methodism is " the gangrene of modern religious history;" 
and here in the United States, in In ew England, a couple of 
volumes have fallen from the press, whose estimate of the 
Wesleyan revival is that it is solely the work of the devil : 



249 



"I am now coming trader the necessity of saying some tilings 
which will be unpleasant for me to say, and for many to 
read. That I take no pleasure in speaking of the faults of 
Methodism, may be learned mom the testimony of my stated 
hearers, who will bear me witness that the name Methodism 
has been strange to my pnlpit. Bnt since Providence now 
opens the way for me to speak of the results of near twenty 
years' observation, made here npon the throbbings of the 
very heart of Methodism, I feel called npon to record my 
deliberately formed judgment." Such is the language of the 
-Rev. Parsons Cooke. D.D.. a Congregational clergyman 
of Lynn, Massachusetts, after having given an account of the 
introduction of Methodism into that beautiful sea-port. 
Then, in his first volume, he devotes nearly a hundred page? 
to what he styles "An Estimate of Methodism;" and the 
second volume is wholly dedicated to this subject. The 
author rambles in his style, and mixes with his general 
theme many foreign topics ; but the substance of his opinion 
can be drawn very conclusively from one or two quotations : 
" When Methodism came into Lynn," says he, "it came to 
claim its own. "Whatever hindered its coming hither, Puri- 
tanism did not. Calvinism was not here in any living force. 
For a long time, all the preaching that was in Lynn had 
been a preaching of just the same doctrines that are now 
heard in our Methodist pulpits. So, when Jesse Lee arrived 
to plant the Methodist standard, he declared that he had not 
for a long time felt hims elf so much as if at home and among 
Methodists. And why should he not be at home ? The 
people were like Methodists, because they were Methodists. 
The whole current of their preaching for fifty years had been 
the preaching of Methodist doctrines, without Methodist 
forms and names. The difference between Mr. Henchman's 
preaching" — [Mr. Henchman was a former pastor of the 
Congregational church of Lynn] — " and Mr. Lee's was, that 
the one was dead, and the other was alive. And a living 

11* 



250 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



dog is better than a dead lion. So the people would readily 

welcome an enginery that could infuse life into a system 
which they had already cherished. Indeed, so well had the 
ground been prepared for such a one as Jesse Lee, that if 
there had been no Jesse Lee, the soil would have spon- 
taneously produced one. Then there was no Universalism, 
or Unitarianism, and little of professional infidelity. M< •>: 
who were not Calvinists, were Arminians. All iiTeligion, 
and much of the apparent religion, sympathized with Ar- 
minianism. So Methodism had this advantage, that its doc- 
trines were in favor even with the irreligious. It had affini- 
ties of faith with the opposers of vital godliness even while it 
had so much appearance of vitality. The change which it- 
brought to Lynn was an artificial life infused into a pre- 
existing body of doctrines. Arminianism used with no more 
outward forces than are needful to the effect of the truth, is 
sure eventually to become cold and dead. Yet it is capable 
of great energy when set in the Methodist system, employed 
as a galvanic apparatus to give it seeming life. So Roman- 
ism is a most energetic system in its way. That, too, has its 
basis in the Arminian doctrines. It, like Methodism, denies 
the doctrines of election, of efficacious grace, of perseverance. 
And it inculcates the existence of sinless perfection, and even 
more, of works of supererogation; that is, becoming more 
than perfect. And with these Methodist doctrines, Roman- 
ism has wrought with fearful power. But the power lay 
especially in a machinery so well fitted to the doctrines. 
These doctrines are nowhere found to have a vitality in them- 
selves, or in the Holy Ghost, which gives a power to the 
simple preaching of them. They need the bellows to raise 
the flame, which expires as soon as the bellows rests. 
Where Arminianism is simply preached, and no more 
enforced by machinery than gospel truth is required to be 
enforced, it is powerless. Yet, when set in the system of 
Romanism, addressing with superhuman dexterity so many 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



251 



principles and passions of depraved nature, it has made the 
world to tremble before it. But a power that is imparted by 
machinery cannot be the power of God unto salvation. The 
faith of believers does not stand in the wisdom of men, but 
in the power of God. So, invariably, Arminianism, whenever 
it has gone unsupported by the Methodist economy, or the 
Romish economy, or something like it, has put into the sleep 
of death every considerable branch of the church that has 
adopted it. The modern development of it, under the 
auspices of Arminius himself, appropriated to itself what was 
at a time the preponderant power of the church in Holland; 
and now the Dutch Remonstrants in all the Netherlands 
have dwindled to the compass of four thousand people. In 
France and Switzerland, the stealthy infusion of this doctrine 
brought the once Calvinistic churches to the brink of the 
grave. In England, the Presbyterian church came to its 
death by it. In Scotland, Moderatisrn, another name for 
Arminianism, went far enough to show that it was working 
only death. In Massachusetts, it rocked the cradle of 
infant Unitarianism in a hundred churches. For all these 
churches abandoned Calvinism and became Arminians before 
they became Unitarians. In truth, there was here no 
apostasy from Calvinism to Unitarianism. But it was in all 
cases the natural transition from Arminianism to Unitarian- 
ism. 

<£ These historical facts illustrate the incompetency of Armi- 
nianism, or of the Methodist doctrines, to supply the energies 
of a religious body without artificial and unscriptural appli- 
ances, such as Methodism has. This of itself shows those 
doctrines to be fundamentally wrong, and not, like the 
gospel truth, the proper channels of divine life. Doctrines 
that cannot preserve church life by the preaching and ordi- 
nances which God has appointed, without the aid of a gal- 
vanic battery, are not the incorruptible seed that liveth and 
abideth forever. But do not Calvinistic churches die out ? 



252 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



That is the question. Do they ? Do churches while Cal- 
vinistic die out ? Single branches, from local causes, here 
and there may die from a tree that has living root and stock; 
but where did the main body of any community of Calvinistic 
churches die out before they had lost their Calvinism ? And 
very rarely did any go away from Calvinism but through the 
Arminian road. There have, as we have already seen, been 
many instances in which churches have first migrated into 
different regions of doctrines, and then have sickened and 
died. And the adoption of simple Arminianism by a church 
has, in the light of all history, been shown to be the first 
stage of a consumption on its vitals. This approach to 
death has come for want of the quickening force of the 
doctrines of the cross. The church is sanctified through the 
truth. Cut off from the truth, no human art can prolong its 
life. 

'"But great success has attended Methodism.' True; 
and still greater success has attended Romanism, and for a 
like cause. But it is yet to be proved whether it is not, in 
the preponderant result, success in turning men from the sim- 
plicity that is in Christ. But we shall have more of this 
hereafter. One great difficulty which we have ever felt about 
it is, that Jlethodist teaching seeems to be framed to meet the 
tastes of depraved minds ; that Methodism has its success 
more in thai it can preach what the exeiues of the ceoss 
wish to heae than in anything else. It labors not to bring 
men up to eeligiox, but to bresG eeligiox dowx to the 

DEPRAVED IXCLIXATTOXS OF 3IEX." 9 

The language of this quotation is certainly very plain and 
not to be misunderstood ; it makes a total condemnation of 
the theology of Methodism, referring its great success entirely 
to its machinery, which, by inference, would seem to be con- 
sidered good; but in the second volume, at the very end of 



9 Cook's Centurie?, vol. i., pp. 252-258. 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



253 



it, where the author sums up the substance of his opinions, 
the machinery of Methodism is also very heartily condemned: 
" Some may shrink," says the writer, " from the conclusion 
to which the facts and reasonings of this book would con- 
duct them, in the thought that a system that produces so 
many good results, and holds in connection with it so many 
good men, cannot be a bad system. It has been no purpose 
of mine to maintain a denial that Methodism has done any 
good, or that many of the Methodists are the real regenerate 
children of God. I cheerfully grant all that any fair and dis- 
criminating witness would testify on that score. And having 
done that, my ground is broad enough to sustain the conclu- 
sion that the system, as a system, is bad — that its results con- 
tain more of evil than good — that its ministrations are more 
of death than of life — that it is one of the great hendeaxces 
to the purity and progress of religion, which must be takex 

OUT OF THE WAT !" 10 

It ought to be distinctly observed, that the foregoing esti- 
mates of Methodism are not to be regarded as the opinions 
of individual writers, but of whole classes of individuals, 
whose views were thus representatively expressed. The 
Avorks written in opposition to Methodism, in England and 
the United States, are to be counted by the hundred ; a 
catalogue of three hundred and eighty-four of such publi- 
cations was printed in Philadelphia in 1846 ; and the trea- 
tises, tracts, and articles on this side are entirely beyond all 
means of computation. I have made use only of those which 
are to be considered, not as individual authorities, but as the 
representatives of large communities of men, and of the lead- 
ing religious communities since the rise of Methodism to the 

10 Cook's Centuries, vol. ii., p. '297. This second volume bears a very 
significant title : Second Part of Cook's Centuries, Being a Defence and 
Confirmation of the First, showing that Methodism is not a Branch of the 
Church of Christ ! 



254 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



current time. Toplady represents to us the opinion of the 
English and American Calvinists of his day; Priestley repre- 
sents the philosophers and savans of a succeeding period ; 
and in the productions of Sidney Smith we see what the 
literary circles of Great Britain, and in fact of Europe, at 
the beginning of the present century, thought of Methodism. 
In the same way, Dr. Cooke, though not to be compared 
with the humblest of these opponents of Methodism for per- 
sonal position or intellectual strength, is the representative, 
in his estimate of Wesleyanism, of Xew England Congre- 
gationalism. He is himself a leading clergyman of that de- 
nomination, holding many of its highest official trusts ; he is 
the editor of one of their most popular weekly sheets ; and 
his first volume, at least, as is learned from his own state- 
ments, was not only approved by many of their denomina- 
tional newspapers, but by a large number of their chief 
ministers and theological professors. There is another fact 
in proof of the representative character of Dr. Cooke's work. 
Xot only did it come from the press, and go into circulation 
in Xew England, without the censure of any denominational 
periodical, and with the approbation of not a few, but the 
General Conference of the State of Maine declined to express 
an adverse opinion of it, or any opinion at all, when requested 
officially, by a conference of American Methodism, to say 
whether Dr. Cooke was or was not correct in arraying among 
its friends some fifteen or twenty of the leading Congrega- 
tional clergymen of that State, and many of the first minis- 
ters of that denomination throughout the country. Their 
refusal gives sanction to the claim of representation, other- 
wise pretty well established, as asserted for this production 
by its author ; we have before us, therefore, a chain of ad- 
verse judgments of Methodism, running from the days of its 
origin to the present moment ; and we perceive that the 
Wesleyan Movement has been regarded, by those hostile to 



CHARACTER A^D SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



255 



it, either as simple fanaticism, or downright wickedness, 
from the hour in which it received existence ! 11 

II. It must not be supposed, from the examples of Toplady, 

11 Dr. Wise (Popular Objections to Methodism Answered) has published 
a reply to these volumes of Dr. Cooke ; but the best answer is to be found 
in the statements of the work itself. Read closely, and reduced to a syl- 
logistic form, the work stands as follows : First, Congregationalism, which 
was established in Lynn in 1632, and which had the advantage of embrac- 
ing and controlling the entire population of the place, ran a long career 
of orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and corruption, till, in the year 1783, it gave 
full proof of its results by almost a total wreck, not only of godliness, but 
of morality and decency, as evinced in the fact of their extending a call, 
in that year, to the Rev. Obadiah Parsons, an irreligious and very convivial 
character, the church and congregation well knowing at the time that this 
Mr. Parsons was also an adulterer, he having just been tried for adultery 
in a neighboring parish, and as evinced in another striking fact, that the 
number of citizens in town making any pretensions to personal religion 
had dwindled down from hundreds, if not thousands, to just fourteen in- 
dividuals. This is the minor premiss of this work. Secondly, the major 
premiss is, that the religious and moral character of the Congregational 
church of Lynn, within the period specified, during which there was no- 
thing but Calvinism in this portion of the United States, was a fair exam- 
ple, excepting as to the matter of open unchastity, but inclusive of any 
amount of worldliness and want of piety, of the religious and moral cha- 
racter of Congregationalism generally in New England. Therefore, thirdly, 
the sage conclusion is, that Methodism, which was not known in Lynn, nor 
in any part of the Xew England States, till the year 1790, seven entire 
years after the full maturity of every element of corruption in that Cal- 
vinistic city, when all the sad fruits of an exclusive Congregationalism had 
fully ripened, and even rotted on the soil that bore them, must be held 
responsible for their production, and for the production of all the existing 
vices of every other place in Congregational Xew England, and in all the 
world, where it has since become (without eradicating every evil) the lead- 
ing denomination. Such is the argument of Dr. Cooke's two volumes ; 
and he is entirely welcome, without any answer here, to all he can gain 
by the circulation of such a publication. The only fear is, not that his 
logic will be received, but that his facts will not be generally acknow- 
ledged, as they ought to be, by those for whose benefit the book was 
written ! 



250 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



Hill, Priestley, Smith, and Cooke, that all the Calvinists of 
Great Britain, or that all the higher gentry of the realm, or 
that all the philosophers of the kingdom, or that all the wits 
and literary characters of the mother country, or that all of 
the Puritans of ~New England, have been, from the begin- 
ning, arrayed against the advance of Methodism. Toplady 
was openly discountenanced by not a few of the party in 
whose behalf he wrote. Sir Richard Hill found his influence 
to be more than matched, without the request or interfer- 
ence of Mr. Wesley, by other persons in high life, who 
stepped forward to defend the character, if not the designs, 
of the great Founder. The disapprobation of Priestley was 
met by the approbation and good wishes of Doctor Franklin. 
The bitterness of Sidney Smith was at once tempered, if not 
counteracted, by the genius of Robert Southey ; and as to 
Dr. Gooke, he stands on his " bad eminence " almost alone, 
so far as existing and open assaults upon Methodism are 
concerned. He would have us think, it is true, that, beneath 
all this superficial respect for Methodism in this country 
exhibited by the clergymen of his denomination, there is 
but little else than a secret hostility and settled determination 
to oppose it to the last. This may be so ; but it is certain, 
that, for the last forty years, the writers of that order have 
published but little against the morality or the aims of 
Methodism ; while very many of them have manifested such 
an appearance of good feeling - as left little, if any thing, to 
desire in that respect. The truth of it is, in fact, that Me- 
thodism has always had its strong friends in every rank of 
society, in England and in America, and among all classes 
and denominations. Mr. Wesley and his adherents, on both 
sides of the Atlantic, have always - pursued the policy of 
going right along with their work, quite regardless of the 
clamors raised about them by parties whom they could not 
expect to be their friends ; and the result has justified, most 
abundantly, the wisdom of their course. Their outside 



CHARACTER. AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



257 



friends, more and more convinced of the singleness of their 
purpose, gradually multiplied as the movement went for- 
ward ; and Mr. Wesley had not long been dead, before a 
reaction began to show itself among those very classes of the 
English and American population, which had been most 
severe in their opposition. 

In looking for the origin of this reaction, it may seem 
strange to some, that it should begin, as it certainly did, 
among the literary men of England. There is nothing sin- 
gular, however, in this fact. Mr. Wesley had been himself a 
literary man ; every member of his father's family, his father 
himself included, were known as literary characters ; they 
had been pioneers in more than one department of literature 
and expert in all ; and the literati of Great Britain began to 
feel, that, in taking some part in behalf of the real character 
of Mr. Wesley, and of the character and tendencies of his 
work, they were only doing justice to an elder brother of 
their own household. Besides, literary men are of ail the 
world the least inclined to religious bigotry ; their studies 
are calculated to make them liberal ; their work is confined 
to no narrow or single schemes, but embraces everything 
useful and interesting to humanity ; they are led to overlook 
the little party feuds of ordinary people, and the still smaller 
but wickeder zeal of sects, ranging as they do over the entire 
expanse of the intellectual and material universe ; and they 
thus acquire and fix the habit of being just, and even gener- 
ous, to the honest endeavors of all honorable and earnest 
men. It was entirely natural, therefore, that Methodism, 
the life-work of an Oxford scholar, should find the first reac- 
tion in its favor, after the long era of popular and sectarian 
persecution through which it had made its way, in the liter- 
ary circles of Great Britain ; but I confess it is a fact not 
altogether to have been expected, that the first writer of any 
note, who undertook to give a correct idea of the Wesleyan 
reformation, was one of the ablest of the contributors to that 



258 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



very magazine, which, from 1800 to 1810, poured out the 
vials of its wrath upon the head of the then sainted Wesley. 

Robert Southey, the writer here referred to, so far as I 
have ever been able to see, intended to do even-handed jus- 
tice to the great enterprise of Mr. Wesley ; and his failures 
to do. so proceeded, not from his design, but from his educa- 
tion. With the exce])tion of his literary taste, which allied 
him to Wesley by a strong tie of secret sympathy, he was 
totally unfit for the self-imposed task of giving a true esti- 
mate of Methodism. In early life, he had been a rank 
Socinian ; subsequently, and not without giving occasion to 
the charge of being mercenary in his religious movements, 
he suddenly became a member of the Church of England ; 
and, as is not uncommon with converts, he not only abjured 
all laxity of faith, but took his position on the extreme right 
of the High Church party. He was also equally unsuited to 
his work by his political experience and connections. In his 
youthful days, he and several others of his age and rank 
wrote incessantly against all monarchical government; they 
maintained that constitutions were an unjust fetter on the 
liberties of the people ; and they proceeded to say,' that 
society could never be what the Creator intended, unless the 
mass of the population of a country could resolve and act, 
at any moment, precisely according to their existing impulse, 
without the fear of precedents or the shackles of established 
regulations. In a word, Southey began the world as a red- 
republican of the school of the French Illuminati ; and his 
whole early manhood had been stained with these wretchedly 
loose principles. !STow, however, at the time of writing his 
celebrated Life of Wesley, soon after the appearance of the 
articles in the Edinburgh Review, by Sidney Smith, he had 
not only abandoned all the convictions of his youth, and left 
far behind him all respect for the doctrines and institutions 
of popular liberty, but had leaped into the place and attitude 
of a leader of the English Tories. In spite of these lofty 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



259 



vaultings, however, there was much of the red-republican and 
still more of the Socinian yet clinging to him. He was a 
combination of religious and political contradictions, some- 
times wounding his new friends by a High Church Toryism 
entirely too arrogant even for their digestion ; at other times 
damaging their cause by venting some Socinian heresy, or 
an unlucky relic of his Wat Tyler politics, which seemed to 
have stuck to him after all his sudden and. perilous saltations. 
There can be gathered, indeed, from the pages of his Life 
of Wesley, specimens of his opinions of every shade ever 
professed or adopted by him ; and the work, as pointed out 
by his brother-in-law and friend, Coleridge, is but a book of 
contradictions. How could a man of bis education, indeed, 
write a reliable life of the founder of Methodism ? Wesley 
was a Low Churchman ; he a High Churchman of the bold- 
est front. Wesley had always been moderate, constitutional, 
loyal in his political opinions ; he had been never moderate, 
but either extremely liberal, even to licentiousness, or ex- 
tremely rigid, to the last verge of autocracy. The convic- 
tions of Wesley had taken hold of his conscience and held 
possession of the deepest recesses of his nature. Southey 
was only intellectual ; his religion was only his opinion ; his 
principles were his judgment ; and he could maintain or 
abandon either, or anything, as he saw it to be tributary, or 
not tributary, to his personal advantage. Consequently, he 
beheld nothing deeper in a man, or in human nature, than 
selfishness ; and the glory of human life was nothing better 
than a prosperous ambition. With such a vision he looked 
upon the life and character of John Wesley. He made him 
a personage of good mind, finished education, and blameless 
moral purposes, but moved to his remarkable career of suf- 
fering and of labor by no impulse but a sort of half-justifiable 
ambition. He sometimes calls him fanatical ; but his most 
customary word of censure is enthusiasm. Sidney Smith's 
fanatic had become Robert Southey's enthusiast. In gene- 



260 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



ral, Wesley's doctrines were thought to be right enough ; 
his course of life could be easily accounted for and made 
consistent ; but his convictions were too profound, too funda- 
mental, taking too rank a hold of the elements of his nature. 
His religion, in a word, was about orthodox, only there was 
too much of it. Life and death, heaven and hell, were not 
intellectual speculations, but revealed realities ; and Wesley 
had not spent his days in dignified retirement, or in the 
elegant labors of a regular parish, but had gone out, single- 
handed and alone at first, to say to the thousands flocking to 
hear him, that every man of them was on trial for the joys 
or sorrows of eternity. He might believe the thirty-nine 
articles ; he might believe the most fearful declarations of 
the New Testament ; but he need not make so much ado 
about such matters. He did make the ado ; he took his 
Maker at his word; and he had gone up and down through 
the realm, though shut off from every worldly honor, and 
pursued by persecution, urging men to make full preparation 
for the life to come by following the guidance of that volume 
which God had given us as the lamp to be carried by a race 
of immortals on a journey to a world of everlasting habita- 
tions. Wesley and his followers were, therefore, " enthu- 
siastic ;" they were " extravagant ;" they did not believe too 
much ; but they believed, and felt, and consequently acted, 
with too much strength and fervor. On the whole, how- 
ever, there was more good than evil, not only in Wesley, 
but in Methodism ; and Robert Southey was the first man 
of his rank in England to make this liberal concession. 
Indeed, had the Wesleyan movement stood firm to the 
Church of England, even against her own opposition and 
repulses, Wesley and his work would have been, in the eyes 
of this Tory and High Churchman, worthy of the admira- 
tion of all ages : 

" Such was the life," says Southey, on the last page of 
- his production, "and such the labors of John Wesley, 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



261 



a man of great views, great energy, and great virtues. 
That he awakened a zealous spirit, not only in his own 
community, but in a church wmich needed something to 
quicken it, is acknowledged by the members of that church 
itself; that he encouraged enthusiasm and extravagance, 
lent a ready ear to false and impossible relations, and spread 
superstition as well as piety, would hardly be denied by the 
candid and judicious among his own people. In its imme- 
diate effects, the powerful principle of religion which he and 
his preachers diffused, has reclaimed many from a course of 
sin, has supported many in poverty, sickness, and affliction, 
and has imparted to many a triumphant joy in death. 

What Wesley says of the miracles, wrought at the tomb 
of the Abbe Paris, may fitly be applied here : ' In many of 
these instances, I see great superstition, as well as strong 
faith ; but God makes allowance for invincible ignorance, 
and blesses the faith, notwithstanding the superstition.' 
Concerning the general and remoter consequences of Method- 
ism, opinions Avill differ. They who consider the wide- 
spreading schism to which it has led, and who know that the 
welfare of the country is vitally connected with its church 
establishment, may think that the evil overbalances the good. 
But the good may endure, and the evil be only for a time. 
In every other sect, there is an inherent hostility to the 
Church of England, too often and too naturally connected 
with diseased political opinions. So it was in the beginning, 
and so it will continue to be, as long as those sects endure. 
But Methodism is free from this. The extravagances which 
accompanied its growth are no longer encouraged, and will 
altogether be discountenanced, as their real nature is under- 
stood. This cannot be doubted. It is in the natural course 
of things that it should purify itself gradually from whatever 
is objectionable in its institutions. Nor is it beyond the 
bounds of reasonable hope, that, conforming itself to the 
original intentions of its founders, it may again draw tow x ard 



262 



OUTSIDE SOLUTION'S OF THE 



the establishment from -which, it has seceded, and deserve 
to be recognized as an auxiliary institution, its ministers 
being analogous to the regulars, and its members to the ter- 
tiaries and coirtraternities of the Romish Church. The 
obstacles to this are surely not insuperable, perhaps not so 
difficult as they may appear. And were this effected, John 
"Wesley would then be ranked, not only among the most 
remarkable and influential men of his age, but among the 

GEEAT BENEFACTORS OF HIS COUNTRY AND HIS ETXD." 12 

This is as favorable a judgment as could have been antici- 
pated from the pen of a High Churchman of Dr. Southey's 
antecedents ; and it ought not to be concealed that, after the 
first publication of his Life of Wesley, his opinion of his hero 
underwent an entire revolution in regard to the charge of 
personal ambition. His work fell into the hands of Alex- 
ander Knox, Esq., a gentleman in every way equal to Dr. 
Southey for intellectual ability and social standing, who, in 
two communications written at Southey's request, convinced 
him of his error in attributing to Mr. "Wesley any but the 
purest and most exalted motives. " Alexander Knox has 
convinced me," says Southey, in a letter to James Xichols, 
Esq., " that I was mistaken in supposing ambition entered 
largely into Mr. "Wesley's actuating impulses. Upon the 
subject, he wrote a long and most admirable paper, and gave 
me permission to affix it to my own work, whenever it might 
be reprinted. This I shall do, and make such alterations in 
the book as are required hi consequence." Mr. Knox was 

12 Southey's Life of Wesley, vol. ii. pp. 336, 337. Were it only a part 
of the Church of England, Methodism, according to the Laureate, would be 
worthy of the loftiest eulogies ; and the reader will at once conclude, as 
Dr. Southey should have seen, that, in character and qualities, it is just 
what it would be if connected with the English establishment, neither 
better nor worse. The final estimate of this writer, therefore, of English 
and American Methodism, was certainly better than could hare been ex- 
pected from such a quarter. 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 263 



entirely worthy of this regard as a witness in relation to 
Wesley and his movement. In early life, he had been a 
member of a Wesleyan society in England, but had seceded 
in later years, and gone into the Church of England. " Hav- 
ing a growing disposition to think for myself," he says, " I 
could not adopt the opinions which were current amoug his 
followers ; and, before I was twenty years of age, my relish 
for their religious practices had abated." The judgment of 
Mr. Knox, therefore, must be taken as that of a Methodist 
seceder, but of a gentleman of the highest cultivation and 
position, who, notwithstanding his early prejudices against 
Methodism, and his existing prejudices as a warm and con- 
sistent churchman, intended to speak exactly according to his 
convictions. His testimony, in fact, is of the very highest 
order, not second, indeed, to that of Dr. Southey ; for he 
had known Mr. Wesley familiarly from his own boyhood ; 
and such had been Mr. Wesley's respect for him in return, in 
spite of their ecclesiastical separation, that he had always 
made Mr. Knox's residence his home, to the last year of his 
life, whenever his peregrinations over Great Britain had 
brought him to his neighborhood. Behold, then, what a 
picture of the man of God is held up in the first of the two 
papers of Knox as submitted to "Dr. Southey ! The learned 
biographer, giving too much credence to the low slanders 
referred to in the first division of this chapter, had left upon 
his pages several dark insinuations respecting the moral 
purity of Mr. Wesley. See how these insinuations vanish 
before the testimony of a person who knew him, but who 
had no temptation to over-estimate his character ! " The 
truth is," says Knox, "that John Wesley considered the 
excellency of Christianity to consist in its delivering the 
human spirit from the dominion and the pollution of moral 
evil ; and thus qualifying and disposing it for the moral 
enjoyment of God. This central principle of Christian phi- 
losophy he embraced for himself, and urged upon others, as 



264: 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



essentially and infinitely the one thing needful. His moral 
creed was comprehended in that weightiest and most pro- 
found oracle : 4 Blessed are the pure in heart ; for they shall 
see God.' St. Augustine's pregnant aphorism — ' Fecisti nos 
tibi) et cor semper irrequietum, donee requiescat in te ' — was 
adopted by him in all its fullness ; nor do the winged words 
of St. Chrysostom express this supreme truth with deeper 
feeling, or more strongly attest the pious ardor of him who 
uttered them, than passages of frequent recurrence in Mr. 
Wesley's later sermons. 

" It is this moral radiance, that so often breaks forth in 
Mr. Wesley's writings, which could alone compensate an 
unprejudiced reader for the shallow reasonings and unsup- 
ported conclusions " — it is the churchman that is now 
speaking — " into which his natural temperament, his favor- 
ite theories, and his peculiar circumstances, conspired to 
betray him. Still, in spite of these repulsive features, I must 
confess for myself that I feel inexpressible satisfaction in re- 
curring to those warm and bright effusions of moral taste 
and spiritual affection. But I could not do so, if my recol- 
lections of John Wesley himself were not in complete ac- 
cordance with the pure practice which he inculcates, and the 
' holy loftiness of heart ' (to use an expression of Archbishop 
Leighton) which he is ever solicitous to inspire. 

" I am well aware that the history of what is called the 
religious w^orld leaves little room for concluding that emi- 
nently zealous men must therefore be immaculate. Yet, even 
had I no personal knowledge of Mr. Wesley's character, the 
practical principles to which I have been adverting would, 
to my mind, raise him far above the reach of any discredit- 
able suspicion. It is in religionists of another cast that moral 
inconsistencies have shown themselves. A faith that does 
not regard everlasting safety as vitally depending on present 
purity, though in general its practice may be much better 
than its theory, is little likely to lay the ax to the root of 



CHARACTER AXD SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 265 



human corruption, and may not always be sufficiently on the 
alert to repel and subdue the first motions of moral evil. 
But that one, whose entire principles indispensably bound 
him to pursue purity of heart and life, and made the sub- 
stantive possession of that purity essential to his daily and 
hourly comfort — that such a one, I say, after years of de- 
votedness, and in the midst of what might be called a life 
of sacrifice, should, in one particular instance, depart wick- 
edly from his course, and, on one single occasion, give the 
lie to all the other actions of his life, all the words of his 
mouth, and all the vivid issues of his ever-profiuent heart, 
would be against all example, and beyond all credibility. I 
rest assured that any such moral- anomaly would be sought 
for in vain in the annals of the Christian world. 

" But something much stronger than any general argument 
settles my conviction of John Wesley's perfect integrity: I 
mean the tranquil and satisfied mind with which I saw him 
resign himself to the rapid sinking of his frame, and the cer- 
tain approach of his dissolution. Mr. Southey has remarked, 
with his usual discernment and good feeling, on the evidences 
of this fact which have come before him. Had he personally 
witnessed what he so justly conceived, he would have needed 
no additional proof that Mr. Wesley enjoyed as cloudless a 
mental retrospect as could consist with mortality. 

u I had an opportunity of closely observing him, for some 
days together, in the last year but one of his life. He was, 
just then, after a wonderful continuance of natural strength, 
beginning to 1 find that he grew old.' His sight was much 
decayed, and he himself was conscious that his memory was 
weakened, though it did not yet appear in his conversation. 
Of his own actual feelings under these increasing infirmities, 
I have an interesting record, in a letter dated Dublin, April 
11th, 1789, written soon after his last arrival in Ireland, and 
notifying his intended visit to the place where I resided, and 
where he was to be my guest. e You see in the public papers,' 

12 



266 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



he says, c that I shall be with yon, if God permit, on the 30th 
of next month. If I should be called to a longer journey 
before that time, I hope you will be able to say, " Good is 
the will of the Lord." Every time we meet, it is less and 
less probable that we should meet again in this world ; but 
it is enough if we are counted worthy to obtain that world, 
and the resurrection of the dead.' 

" After receiving such an intimation of conscious decline, 
I was delighted to find his cheerfulness in no respect abated. 
It was too obvious that his bodily frame was sinking ; but 
his spirit was as alert as ever ; and he was little less the life 
of the company he happened to be in, than he had been three 
and twenty years before, when I first knew him. I had some 
motive at that time for stating, in a newspaper publication, 
the impression which his manner and conversation then par- 
ticularly made upon me. This sketch of Mr. Wesley, Mr. 
Henry Moore, his first biographer, inserted, with the altera- 
tion of one unimportant word, in his volume ; and it was 
copied both by Mr. Hampson and Dr. Whitehead. Of what 
I then said, I do not, after the reflection of so many years, 
retract an iota. Now, as then, I feel it to be a case in which 
there was no room for delusion. Such unclouded sunshine 
of the breast, in the deepest winter of age, and on the felt 
verge of eternity, bespoke a mind whose recollections were 
as unsullied as its present sensations were serene. It seemed 
to verify to the letter those weighty words of the Psalmist : 
' Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right, 
for that shall bring a man peace at the last.'' " 

In repelling, in behalf of Mr. Wesley, the charge of fanati- 
cism, as he had just done that of ambition, Mr. Knox de- 
scribes and sanctions the character of Methodism itself: 

"Another charge against Mr. Wesley," he says, in his second 
paper, " I cannot equally dispute, namely, that of enthusiasm. 
Still, he was an enthusiast of no vulgar kind. As Nelson was 
an enthusiast for his country, so was John Wesley for religion. 



CHARACTER AKD SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 267 



Where the highest interests of man were concerned, Mr. 
Wesley made no account of precedent, or maxims of human 
or even ecclesiastical prudence. The Church of England 
appeared to him to have fallen into a state of stupor like that 
of the ancient Jewish Church ; and it was his persuasion that 
a kind of second John the Baptist, a 1 voice of one crying in 
the wilderness,' was necessary to awaken it : to this duty he 
conceived himself providentially called, and he engaged in it 
with as firm a purpose, as if he had been commissioned by a 
voice from heaven. *But in this material respect John Wes- 
ley differed from all vulgar enthusiasts — that he did not im- 
agine any such voice, nor had he the slightest thought of 
either impulse or intimation from above. Singular as his 
course was, he no more supposed himself raised above the 
guidance of his reason than of his conscience ; but the pre- 
mises from which he reasoned frequently derived so much 
of their shape and color from the abstracted view which he 
took of them, and the sanguine spirit in which he regarded 
them, as to produce results differing perhaps little, in ap- 
pearance, from those of strict and proper fanaticism ; while, 
in reality, they were only the regular workings of his pecu- 
liarly formed and, at the same time, religiously devoted 
mind." 

In regard to the character of Methodism, however, as dis- 
tinct from that of its founder, Mr. Knox bears the most direct 
and ample testimony ; and his testimony is the more valuable, 
because, when giving it, he could compare the religious con- 
dition of Great Britain after and before the establishment of 
the Wesleyan movement : 

" I would here take the liberty of observing, that there is 
nothing in Mr. Southey's work which has interested me more 
than the view which he appears to me to take of God's pro- 
vidential government ; and I have read with sincere pleasure, 
in a very recent publication, the strong avowal of his ' per- 
suasion, that all things upon the great scale have tended to 



268 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



the general good, and the development of the great scheme 
of Providence.'' The frequent application of this principle 
to Mr. Wesley's commencement and career, has always gra- 
tified and sometimes surprised me ; I mean, because I found 
in some instances such a concurrence with preconceptions of 
my own. The necessity which Mr. Southey has so luminously 
shown (in his ninth chapter) for some interposition of Provi- 
dence to resuscitate the practical sense of religion in the 
English mind, at the period when Messrs. Wesley and White- 
field began to sound their alarm, has always appeared to me 
to invest the phenomenon of Methodism with a character 
wholly remote from contingency. I must not now, however, 
digress into the particular line of thought to which I have 
been led respecting such movements ; but I confess I have 
been disposed to conclude, not merely that Wesley and 
Whitefield were raised to supply a defect for which the 
Church of England had not provided, but rather to serve a 
pnrpose to which such an establishment as ours was perfectly 
inadequate. 

"The strict canonical order of our Church, which at once 
furnishes aliment for the most advanced piety, and preserves 
that piety, however elevated, from every alloy of fanaticism, 
afforded no proportional means of awaking an entire people 
from a moral sleep, which was consanguineus lethi. Had 
even any number of the established clergy felt the exigence 
of the case, and set themselves to remedy it by their exer- 
tions, the effect at best would have been local, and most 
probably transient ; while, perhaps, the regularity of the 
Church might have been disturbed, and its spirit, if not 
vitiated, at least diluted, by the adoption of measures which 
honest zeal might have inspired, and without which it might 
have been, perhaps justly, thought that little or nothing was 
to be accomplished. 

" An agency, therefore, was called forth, which might go 
every length that was thought expedient, without blemishing 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



269 



the character of the Established Church, or deranging its 
machinery. And the two extraordinary persons who were 
to serve this providential purpose seemed so selected, that 
their exertions, jointly and severally, might be sufficient to 
diffuse a new religious feeling through the multitude, and to 
effect, eventually, a kind of moral revolution in the most 
intelligent and enlightened of nations. I do not now rate 
the work which has been done by its intrinsic qualities (the 
crudeness of which might be fitted for an immature state of 
the public mind), but by its magnitude, and by the contrast 
now apparent with that prevalent indifference to religion 
which I myself remember." 

This distinguished witness is equally able and emphatic in 
his general approval of the doctrines of the Wesleyan body. 
Speaking of Mr. Wesley's works, which, as is Avell under- 
stood, are the standards of Methodist doctrine on both sides 
of the Atlantic, he says : 

" The consequence has been, that, by whatever imperfec- 
tions or hallucinations his writings may be blemished, the 
most genuine elements of pure and un defiled religion are to 
be found in them, not only in an easily separable form, but, 
as it has appeared to me, when separated and systematized, 
possessing a consistency and plenitude of practical Christian 
truth, not, as far as I know, equally furnished by any modern 
writer. The same principles, I confess, have been repeatedly 
maintained. They are (as I have intimated above, and more 
than once ventured to assert), in substance, those of our 
most celebrated Church-of-England divines. But in these 
latter there is generally some questionable admixture, which 
either obscures the brightness or abates the energy of the 
truths which they are solicitous to maintain. If the dogmas 
are ever so completely rejected, there is seldom an equal 
exception from the opposite excesses of Pelagius in earlier, 
or of Episcopius in later times. It would appear, perhaps, 
to have been reserved for John Wesley to draw a strictly 



270 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



definitive line between the one class of misconceptions and 
the other." 

Mr. Knox attributes the remarkable success of Method- 
ism, throughout the world, to the personal character of Mr. 
Wesley, to the doctrinal position of his movement, and to 
its irresistible moral power among the masses of the world's 
population. 13 

Such is the testimony of a very able man, and a member 
of the Church of England, who had every opportunity of 
knowing the daily life of Mr. Wesley, and of comprehending 
the character of his mission. But I must produce, from the 
same denomination, a single other witness ; and it shall be, 
like all I have offered, of no common order. It shall be no 
less a personage than the well-known Isaac Taylor, a philo- 
sopher of world-wide reputation, and an author who has 
devoted his ripest years to the investigation and treatment 
of religious subjects. Mr. Taylor has written a work on the 
character of Wesley and his movement; and though he does 
not find either of them perfect, and says much that proves 
the prejudices of his religious education, his volume abounds 
with the most ample acknowledgments of the great value to 
be set upon the Wesley an reformation. He wonders how 
such a man as Dr. Southey could have beheld anything like 
ambition, or the love of power, or similar vice in the open 
life of Mr. Wesley: 

" No mind and heart," he says, " that has ever attracted 
the eyes of mankind, is more thoroughly transparent than 

13 Appendix to Southey's Life of Wesley, vol ii., pp. 339-410. Xo man 
ought to read this Life of Wesley without paying particular attention to 
these two documents of Mr. Knox. Th^y were acknowledged by Dr. 
Southey himself as having radically modified his views of Wesley and of 
Methodism ; and they certainly neutralize every unfriendly criticism of the 
biographer, leaving his work the best biography of the Founder of 
Methodism in our language. Without the Knox papers, however, it is the 
most fake and injurious. The best edition of this life is that of Dr. Curry. 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 271 

Wesley's. How is it, then, that, like Loyola's, it can have 
furnished a problem ? To read his journals and letters, or 
his sermons and polemical writings, is to come into the pre- 
sence, not merely of a master-spirit, and of one who stands 
unmatched in energy, constancy, consistency, but of a man 
who was too guileless to think of saving himself from the 
imputation of inconsistency, and far too fervently intent upon 
an object beyond himself to entertain any care about that 
resemblance of egotism, or of ambition, which the pursuit 
of that object could not fail to impart to his mode of acting 
— acting as he did, as the founder, proprietor, and adminis- 
trator of a society so widely extended. "Why is it, then, 
that, among those who would wish to be thought his apolo- 
gists (though not his disciples), he has been so spoken of as 
if some mystery overshadowed that bright head, or as if 
that countenance, beaming, as it does, with child-like love, 
was the covering of an abyss ? It has so happened because 
the character and the course of Wesley, as of his colleagues, 
involves a far deeper problem than that of the individual 
dispositions and motives of the man. The Gospel — under- 
stood and bowed to in all its depth and height of meaning — 
furnishes the only possible means of clearing up the perplex- 
ities that attach to the motives and conduct of those who 
from it have received their impulse, and who have walked 
according to its rule. Wesley perplexes those only who, if 
they would confess the fact, are still more perplexed by 
Christianity itself." 14 

After meeting and removing the criticisms of South ey and 
his annotator, S. T. Coleridge, Mr. Taylor proceeds to make 
a still more emphatic reference to the character of Metho- 
dism and of its great founder : 

" If he had moved in a private sphere," he says, speaking 
of Wesley, " that for instance of a parish priest, Wesley's 

14 Taylor's Wesley and Methodism, pp. 86, 



272 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



flock would not have known that their minister had so much 
as one fault ; and the admiration and love of his intimate 
friends would only have been a more emphatic expression of 
the feeling which would have pervaded the little world whose 
happiness it was to live within sight and hearing of him. 
His was a personal virtue that was not merely unblemished, 
for it was luminously bright. His countenance shone with 
goodness, truth, purity, benevolence ; a sanctity belonged to 
him, which those near him felt, as if it were a power with 
which the atmosphere was fraught." Further on the writer 
adds : " John Wesley — as to his intellect, and as to his views 
— had his faults and his infirmities : grant it ; but we should 
not have known so much as this, if, what was individual in 
him, had not repeated itself and become a feature of a commu- 
nity that now fills half the world. When thus magnified, each 
ruggedness or want of finish on the surface of his mind, who 
cannot see it ? as to this or that misadjustment of the intel- 
lectual mechanism, who may not point the finger at it? 
These things were of the man ; but his virtues were God's 
own work, perfectly finished — and how well they look, 
although the bright spectrum has spread itself out to a 
diameter as wide as the empire on which the sun never sets ! 
It w r as Wesley's virtues and piety that gave form and tone to 
his teachings ; and his teaching has embodied itself in the 
Christianlike behavior of tens of thousands of his people, on 
both sides of the Atlantic." 15 Mr. Taylor elsewhere says 
that "Wesley's glory was, as one may say, an effulgence of 
Christianity itself," and in another place exclaims : " Wesley, 
apostolic man as he was, and having a heart and a counte- 
nance warm and bright as the sun with genuine benevolence 
— an unselfish, loving soul, a soul large enough to fill a 
seraph's bosom !" 

Of the influence of Methodism upon society at large, and 



15 Wesley and Methodism, pp. 89-90. 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 273 

particularly upon the Christian denominations, Mr. Taylor 
makes ample record : 

" The Episcopal Church," he says, " owes to Methodism, in 
great part, the modern revival of its energies ;" and he makes 
the same declaration in relation to all the other orders of 
evangelical Christians : " The Wesleys furnish a notable 
illustration of this principle. Great innovators, indeed, they 
were ; but anarchists they were not. Themselves bred within 
a strict ecclesiastical inclosure, and firm in their attachment 
to its principles and practices, and far from indifferent to the 
prerogatives which personally they thence derived, and by 
temper also abhorrent of schisms, and inclined to defer to 
authority, they were doubly and trebly guarded against the 
temptation to violate rules and usages at the impulse of mere 
self-will or caprice. Nevertheless, these were the men who, 
in fact, and before they had advanced far on their path, found 
themselves compelled with their own hands to snap asunder, 
as well the staff ' beauty,' as the staff ' bands ;' and they rent, 
not a church they denounced, but the very church they sin- 
cerely loved and fondly clung to. And how wide is the rent 
which was then made ! for the Methodistic schism has not 
merely drawn off certain classes of the community from the 
Episcopal Church, but by the new life it diffused on all sides 
itself, it has preserved from extinction and has reanimated the 
languishing nonconformity of the last century, which, just 
at the time of the Methodistic revival, was rapidly in course 
to be found nowhere but in books." 16 

But the philosopher cannot satisfy his admiration of the 
substance of what he looked upon as" Methodism without a 
still more distinct eulogium : 

" We cannot allow Methodism," he says, " to have been a 
genuine development of the principal elements of Christianity, 
without admitting it to take a prominent place in that provi- 



16 Wesley and Methodism, pp. 58-59. 
12* 



274 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



dential system which, embraces all time, and which, from age 
to age, has, with increasing clearness, been unfolding itself, 
and becoming cognizable by the human mind. So far as 
Methodism truly held forth Christianity, it was a signal hold- 
ing of it forth ; for a more marked utterance of the Gospel 
has occurred only once before in the lapse of eighteen centu- 
ries ; and that, at the Reformation, was not less disparaged 
than this by a large admixture of the errors and inconsisten- 
cies of its movers and adherents. Christianity, given to the 
world at once in the ministry and writings of the apostles, 
has, from the first moment to this, held its onward course 
under a system of administration inscrutable indeed as a 
whole, or as to its reasons, and yet not entirely occult. On 
the contrary, at moments, Heaven's economy has seemed to 
receive a bright beam, as through a dense cloud, making 
conspicuous, if not the motives of the divine government, yet 
the fact. The Reformation is held by Protestants to have 
been such a manifestation of the Providence of God in restor- 
ing the Gospel, and in proclaiming it anew among the nations ; 
and thus the events of the sixteenth century brought out to 
view that which is always real, whether visible or not — 
namely, a divine- interposition — maintaining truth in the 
world, and giving it a fresh expansion from time to time. In 
perfect analogy with the events of the Reformation were 
those which attended the rise and progress of Methodism." - 17 
Strange as it may sound to some ears to hear of Method- 
ism being placed side by side, and that by one of the most 
philosophical and enlightened men of modern times, with the 
Lutheran Reformation^ it seems as if the great author could 
scarcely repeat often enough his high respect for the won- 
derful work started by the labors of Mr. Wesley. He 
wonders how any well-informed writer could ever have 
spoken of it otherwise than with admiration ; and he dwells 

17 Wesley and Methodism, p. 21. 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OE METHODISM. 



5i75 



with evident satisfaction upon the change of public opinion 
in regard to it since the day when its first preachers were 
mobbed and persecuted over England : 

" During these sixty, or seventy, or eighty years," he 
observes, "that have slipped by, the absolute number of 
persons in England, or the proportion of such persons, has 
vastly increased, whose range of view, in matters of religion, 
has been so much widened, that, in disregard to sectarian 
restrictions, and even holding in abeyance some notions 
which they have not discarded, they are more than coldly 
willing to think and speak of Wesley and of Whitefield as 
great and good men, and to admit their claim to stand 
prominent among the benefactors of their country, and the 
worthies of all time. Concomitant with the increase of this 
class of liberally-feeling religious persons, upon whose 
assent and consent a writer may safely rely, there is a pro- 
portionate decrease of the number of those who would tole- 
rate or approve of that style of frigid levity — half banter, 
half admiration, and whole infidelity — which, only thirty 
years ago, passed as the appropriate mode in which a candid 
and philosophic writer [he refers to Southey] should deal 
with Methodism." 1R 

The volume of Mr. Taylor is full of this class of eulogies. 
The author speaks in the highest terms of the talents and 
virtues of Mr. "Wesley, saying of him that he might have 
attained to any eminence as a statesman, or at the bar, and 
comparing him with St. Paul for every Christian virtue. He 
gives due praise to the labors and talents of Mr. Wesley's 
ministerial assistants. He represents the body of the mem- 
bership of the Wesleyan Society, in Europe and in America, 
as piouSj devout, active, energetic, and enlightened Christ- 
ians. Under four heads, he sets down the leading features 
of the Wesleyan Reformation, ascribing its wonderful success 



18 Wesley and Methodism, pp. 1*7, 18. 



276 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



to their well-balanced cooperation ; and these features he 
thinks are of the very substance of our heaven-born religion. 
The first of these elementary features was the rousing of the 
consciences of mankind to the conviction that the facts of 
revelation were realities which every man must one day 
meet : 

"Preaching," says the writer, "in ordinary times, pro- 
duces an effect upon practised congregations analogous, 
indeed, to the subjects that are at anytime brought forward; 
that is to say, the feeling of the people is in harmony with 
• the feeling and intention of the speaker; and beyond this 
rippling of the glassy surface, an individual, here and there, 
is more deeply affected. But, as to the mass, there is no 
proportion what ever-^th ere is no approach toward a propor- 
tionate feeling, as related to the import of the principal facts 
upon which the preacher insists. The difference, then, be- 
tween this preacher and the Methodist of the time gone by is 
of that sort which the instances above adduced illustrate : 
the one is listened to with assent and approval. Every word 
of the other is as a shaft that rives the bosom." 

The second of these features is equally honorable to the 
cause established by Mr. Wesley : 

" As the first element of that revival, which Methodism 
so extensively effected," says our witness, " we have thus 
alleged to be an awakening of the dormant religious con- 
sciousness, or innate sense of our relationship to God, the 
righteous Judge. This religious consciousness, as it goes far 
beyond the range of that moral sense which regards the 
obligations of this life, so does it vastly exceed, and much 
differ from, the feeling which in ordinary times pervades 
Christianized communities. But then, how deep soever and 
intense for a time this awakened consciousness may be, there 
does not necessarily result from it any permanent spiritual 
renovation of the minds in which it takes place. The tumult 
of his new sense toward God may wholly subside, and all 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



277 



the anguish and the terror attending it may be allayed, or 
may be diverted by the return of earthly passions, and the 
soul may thus relapse, and often does relapse, into slumber. 
But if not, and if this quickening proceeds, there supervenes 
a deeper feeling still — a consciousness of the relationship of 
God, the Father of spirits, to the individual spirit, which is 
thus beginning to live a life divine. This reflex idea is the 
proper consequence of that which has already taken posses- 
sion of the soul ; and we find in it what we name as the 
second element of the Methodistic revival." 

The third feature is given by this writer in equally 
glowing colors : 

" A vivid consciousness of this salvation, brought con- 
stantly under correction and revision by reference to the 
Bible, and by an oft-renewed appeal to scriptural tests of 
sincerity, gave a healthy tone to Methodism, for the most 
part, and long preserved it from- subsidence into any of those 
forms of non-scriptural and sentimental excitement which so 
often take the place of effective piety. Methodism thus 
stands contrasted also with that intellectualism to which the 
genius and eloquence of some few noted preachers and 
popular writers of more recent times have given currency. 
Modern congregations, disciplined — under such guidance — 
in the art and practice of listening to sermons as amateurs, 
have drawn preachers by their plaudits more and more into 
this elaborated manner, the purport of which is to pass 
Christianity through the refining fires of each successive 
system of sentimental philosophy that attracts ephemeral 
attention. Methodism knew of no such tastes, no such 
refinements, and although it proclaimed the Gospel rudely, 
often, or under partial aspects, or in objectionable phrases, it 
was not sophisticated Christianity that it published ; it was 
that Biblical Christianity which will never cease to be 
an amazement, a scorn, an insoluble problem to all, of 
every class, religiously-minded or otherwise, who havo 



278 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



not brought themselves to the point of an unconditional 
abandonment of notions and speculations that are of the 
4 earth— earthy.' » 19 

The fourth and concluding feature in this analysis of the 
essence of Methodism is, according to Mr. Taylor, the 
oneness of aim, the salvation of sinners, which he takes to 
be the single object of the Wesleyan revival; and, in this 
view of the case, he gives the most liberal praise to the 
heralds of Methodism in all lands. He presents Whitefield 
as the type of Wesleyan preachers ; and yet, he thinks that 
even he must have had, and did have, in everything but the 
higher graces of his oratory, many equals : 

" Whitefield," he says, " is not thus named as if in dis- 
paragement of others of the Methodistic company, among 
whom some, perhaps, were not at all inferior to him in this 
respect. This elementary impulse, which is the exterior and 
involuntary expression of a deeper feeling, marks the 
Methodistic era ; and it was in various degrees the distinc- 
tion of this band of men, and it is that which should entitle 
them to occupy a prominent position in a genuine history of 
Christianity. On this special ground, where do we find 
their equals — that is to say, where, within the conrpass of 
Christian history, shall we find, not eminent and solitary 
instances, but a company of men, of untainted orthodoxy, 
clear of sectarian virulence, indifferent to things indifferent, 
intent only upon the First Truths — in labors and suffering 
equal to the most zealous, and surpassing perhaps all in 
simplicity of purpose, as ambassadors for Christ — en- 

19 Wesley and Methodism, p. 169. Mr. Taylor presumes too much in 
regard to the want of acquaintance, among Methodist clergymen, with the 
ephemeral philosophies of their day and generation. They know them 
very well ; they read about them, study them even, with a good deal of 
patience ; but then, knowing " a more excellent way," they almost univer- 
sally condemn them. 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 279 

treating men everywhere, £ in Christ's stead, to be recon- 
ciled to God?' " 20 

All these features of Methodism our philosopher presents 
as the reasons of its wonderful expansion ; and he proceeds 
to show that, as a scheme of evangelic aggression, as a 
system of popular religious discipline or instruction, as a 
hierarchy, or system of spiritual government, and as an 
establishment, or body corporate, related to the social state, 
Methodism has accomplished wonders ; but he returns with 
renewed admiration to the simplicity and oneness of object 
as the leading cause of its remarkable prosperity. 

" Foremost?* he says, " among the causes to which may be 
attributed the unexampled success of the Wesleyan body, 
must be named its Unity of Intention, or adherence to or 
steady pursuit of a great principle. This means something 
more than a faithful profession of doctrine, or a continuous 
orthodoxy ; for other bodies have had this same merit, and 
have 1 held fast the form of sound words ' through centuries 
of prophesying in sackcloth. But these communities, with- 
out an exceptive instance, besides their giving less promi- 
nence to that effective truth — ' salvation by faith ' — have 
either derived their organization from tradition from remote 
times, and have allowed their energies to be shackled by 
venerated observances ; or, what is worse, have, as we have 
j«st said, yielded themselves to the will and whim of 
theoretic Biblists^ and have vegetated, or barely breathed, 
within the bandages of a church polity according to texts. 
£To man was more observant of the authority of Holy Scrip- 
ture than Wesley ; but his understanding was as practical in 
its tendencies, as his piety was sincere ; and he perfectly felt, 
whether or not he defined that conviction in words, that an 
Apostolic Church — although right to a pin — which did not 
subserve its main purpose — the spread of the Gospel arid the 



Wesley and Methodism, pp. 181-182, 



280 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



conversion of the ungodly — must be regarded as an absurdity 
and a hindrance to the truth. ' What is the chaff to the 
wheat?' What are wholesome and Scriptural usages and 
orders, which leave Christianity to die away within an 
inclosure ? Wesley, not withdrawing his eye for a moment 
from the great and single purpose of his life, not letting go 
his hold of his one principle, worked upon such materials as 
came to his hand, in the spirit of liberty and power. Kothing 
for mere expediency's sake would he have admitted — nothing 
would he knowingly have done on the assumption, that the 
end sanctified the means. But so long as no apostolic 
injunction is violated, and so long as the spirit and intention 
of apostolic precedents are regarded, a Christian institution 
is free (as he thought) to use the natural ability and sagacity 
which God has given him, for devising a mechanism, which, 
though it may not give contentment to theorists, shall sub- 
serve its high purpose of sustaining and spreading the Gospel. 
Wesleyan Methodism, therefore, whatever may be its 
deficiences if thought of as a church system, or how grave 
soever and ominous its faults as a scheme of government, has 
yet the great and commanding merit of embodying the 
evangelic impulse as its one law and reason: it is simple in 
principle ; and with the working of that principle, no sub- 
ordinate purposes are allowed to interfere." 21 

This estimate of Methodism given us by Mr. Taylor, wit& 
all critical severity, is too abundant in its eulogies for the 
compass of a chapter. The author leaves no part of Metho- 
dism untouched. There is no element of it, indeed, which he 
does not praise ; and when he had examined the entire scope 
of its constitution and history, he could not dismiss his theme 
without looking with a still greater admiration to its future. 
The past, he thinks, is secure ; and he utters his convictions 
of this fact, after having finished his survey, in the strongest 
terms : 

21 Wesley and Methodism, pp. 201, 202. 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



281 



" The Methodism of the last century," says he, " even 
when considered apart from its consequences, must always be 
thought worthy of the most serious regard.- But, in fact, 
that great religious movement has, immediately or remotely, 
so given an impulse to Christian feeling and profession, on all 
sides, that it has come to present itself as the starting-point 
of our modern religious history. The field-preaching of 
Wesley and Whitefield, in 1739, was the event whence the 
religious epoch, now current, must date its commencement. 
Back to the events of that time must we look, necessarily, as 
often as we seek to trace to its source what is most charac- 
teristic of the present time." 22 

The future, too, he thinks is to be glorified by a Metho- 
dism of still higher value, and of greater success, but still a 
Methodism, and the offspring of Wesley : 

" The past Methodism was far from being a message of 
wrath, proclaimed by men of fierce and fanatical tempers — it 
was a message of joy, hope, and love ; and it made its con- 
quests as such, notwithstanding those bold and unmeasured 
denunciations against sin which it so often uttered. And so 
it will be with the future Methodism ; and although it will 
rest itself upon a distinct and laboriously-obtained belief con- 
cerning the ' wrath to come ' — a belief such as will heave the 
human mind with a deep convulsive dread — yet, and not- 
withstanding this preliminary, the renovation which we look 
for will come in as the splendor of the day comes in the 
tropics — it will be a sudden brightness that makes all thino-s 
glad !" 23 

Methodism, in other words, which has outstripped all com- 
parison in its past history, in its future course, according to 
the prediction of Mr. Taylor, is to usher in the millennium ! 

These testimonies on the behalf of Methodism from 

22 "Wesley and Methodism, Preface. 

23 Wesley and Methodism, p. 290. 



282 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



Church of England "witnesses, though taken with a constant 
view to brevity, have occupied so much space, that I must 
be less generous of room to those of other denominations ; 
and yet, an intelligent reader would like to have some idea 
of the manner in which the Presbyterian Establishment of 
Scotland has treated Methodism. The answer can be given 
in a few words. To doctrinal Methodism, the kirk has 
always been an open and strenuous opponent ; but for the 
evangelical labors of Wesley, and the religious blessings of 
his system, it has expressed an undeviating admiration. The 
Scottish clergymen, contemporary w T ith the rise of the Wes- 
leyan revival, while they turned a cold eye upon its intro- 
duction into Scotland as a thing unnecessary, where the 
Gospel was already administered in its purity, and unortho- 
dox as compared with their cherished Calvinism, were not 
slow to acknowledge the early Methodists as sincere disci- 
ples and promulgators of the true practical religion ; the 
greatest of their immediate successors began to look upon 
it as a desideratum for England, though • scarcely needed 
among themselves ; their very greatest man since the days 
of their founder, the Rev. Dr. Chalmers, characterized 
Methodism with remarkable frankness, when he styled it, 
without equivocation or qualification, as " Christianity in 
earnest y" and the North British Review, the organ of this 
communion, with occasional criticisms of particular features 
of the Wesleyan system, has always spoken of it with respect 
and sometimes with admiration : 

" We fear that there are not a few," says that able maga- 
zine in a recent issue, speaking of Mr. Taylor's volume, 
" even of the ministers of Scotland, who scarcely possess so 
much acquaintance with Methodism as Mr. Taylor's work 
assumes, and w r ho, on this account, are but imperfectly quali- 
fied to appreciate and relish it. We would esteem it one 
beneficial result of its publication, if it should lead many in 
Scotland to resolve on acquiring a fuller knowledge of one 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



283 



of the most interesting and important religions movements, 
which the history of the Church presents to our contempla- 
tion." 24 - 

The same work contains the following similar reference to 
Methodism in another place : " We have the highest respect 
for the piety, the wisdom and the ability of the venerable 
men who, in our day, have chiefly regulated the administra- 
tion of the affairs of Methodism. Their successors will have 
a difficult part to act. "We earnestly hope they will be wise 
men, ' who know the time and what Israel ought to do." 25 

This organ of Scottish Presbyterianism, however, gives a 
still warmer and heartier approval to the general good 
character and usefulness of Methodism. Knowing all that 
Mr. Taylor has said in its eulogy, with his glowing eulo- 
giums, indeed, spread out before it, it finds no fault with 
him for inditing such panegyrics, but covers him and his vol- 
ume with a marked but just laudation : 

" We do not," says the magazine, " any more than the 
other literary organs of public opinion, concur in all Mr. 
Taylor's views ; but we have no hesitation in expressing our 
conviction, that there is no living author who has brought 
so fine a combination of distinguished talents and extensive 
acquirements to bear ' upon the inculcation of important prin- 
ciples — principles which it greatly concerns the churches of 
Christ, and all who have any influence in the regulation of 
ecclesiastical affairs, to understand and to ponder.'''' 26 

It must be looked upon as a very notable fact, indeed, 
that, in the place of the sarcasm and slander of an earlier 
period, the literary journals of Great Britain and of the 
United States have fallen into the habit of pronouncing eulo- 
gies upon Methodism. There is the London Quarterly 
Review, in fact, not only High Church ecclesiastically but 

24 North British Review, vol. iv. p. 269, a.d. 1852. 

25 North British Review, vol. xvi. p. 285, 

26 North British Review, vol. xvi. p. 269. 



284: 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



Tory in its politics, and both to the last degree of severity 
and even bitterness, which can treat of Methodism with a 
good deal of historic fairness, and even ntter panegyrics on 
its general character and operations. Not long ago, in 
1849, it gave to the world an able review of Methodism in 
Wales, in which its chief fault, and the only thing to be com- 
plained of by the rankest Wesleyan, was its want of informa- 
tion ; and yet earlier, in 1834, it held up the life and labors 
of John Wesley to the admiration of the British public, 
closing its resume with something like an appeal to his shade 
to stand out in the defence of the Church of England against 
the unnatural confederation of its enemies : 

" It must needs have ever been matter of great solicitude 
to John Wesley to know what was to become of Methodism 
when he should be no more. He could not but feel that, 
whilst he lived, he was the 'be all' of the singular society he 
had constructed ; and he could not but have perceived the 
danger there was, that, when he should die, he would be its 
'end all.' He enjoyed, it is true, a very long life in which 
to consolidate his plans ; he was not called upon to surrender 
his functions to others till most of those contingencies, which 
were likely to derange his machinery, had arisen and been 
met. Still, the genius of the man — his capacity for govern- 
ment — did not appear fully manifest till after his departure. 
So deep had he laid his foundations in the knowledge of 
human nature, that, after death had deprived the Methodists 
of their leader — when their form of government became of 
necessity, and according to his own appointment, changed 
from a monarchy, which it was under him, to a republic, 
which it was to be under the Conference — the character of 
their Institution remained essentially the same ; they con- 
tinued a people still loyal to their king and true to the Con- 
stitution of their country, even as Wesley had enjoined them 
to be ; and whilst the Dissenters, properly so called (for the 
Methodists do not acknowledge themselves such), exhibited 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



285 



deep and early hatred to the Church Establishment, they, 
with every natural impulse, it might have been supposed, to 
the same sentiments, felt themselves still, as it were, under 
the spell of their Patriarch, though no longer in the flesh 
with them, and did not decline to attend the services of the 
Church, partake of her sacraments, and even adopt her forms 
of devotion. This is the greatest triumph of Wesley. He 
himself was held to the Church by associations early and 
strong — he had for his father a faithful minister of that 
Church ; another for his elder brother, to whom he was 
under deep obligations, a man of the most masculine sense 
and the kindest heart. He was bred at Oxford, had been 
a successful student there, and was fellow of his college. 
"Wesley, therefore, had lived within the penetralia of the 
temple, and well understood, by practical experience, the 
knowledge the Church diffused from her seats of learning, 
and the charities she inspired by her parochial ministrations. 
These restraints he never shook off in the days of his boldest 
visions as the Founder of an Order ; but that he should have 
been able to impress it upon his followers, who had no such 
early bias, to take the same equivocal ground as himself, and 
that, whilst w 7 ith him they w^ere to disturb the harmony and 
discipline of the Church — there is no denying that — they 
w r ere w T ith him, too, to bear her some reverence and regard 
her with some good will — this is the most remarkable feature 
of his power, w T ho, though dead, could yet speak so dis- 
tinctly ; and who, if he were now alive, in this season of the 
Churches danger, woidd not be the man to stand silently by, 
consenting to her destruction at the hands of those unnatu- 
ral confederates, the Infidel, the Dissenter, and the Papist.'''' 
Look, reader, and behold this wonder ! About a century 
ago, this John Wesley and his assistants were turned out 
of doors by the Church of England, and then reviled for 
preaching in the fields and highways to the common people. 
Now, before the century was quite finished, that same 



286 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



Church of England sees itself crumbling to pieces, and fall- 
ing into ruin ; and it sends out this cry of distress to the 
spirit of the great departed, though soberly intended for his 
living friends and representatives, to have pity on her mis- 
fortunes, and rescue her from impending annihilation ! Could 
a higher compliment be paid to Wesley or to Methodism ? 27 

The same style of eulogy has at length become current in 
this country. But few quotations need be made in proof 
of this assertion, as they abound within the reach of every 
reader. A few months since, the Knickerbocker Magazine 
gave an elaborate and very complimentary review of the 
life, character, and services of Francis Asbury, the founder 
of Methodism in America ; and even sectarian writers and 
periodicals have of late been unsparing of their respect, not 
only for Asbury and Wesley, but for the great cause for 
which they labored. 

" The history of the rise and progress of Methodism," says 
the Rev. Dr. Murray, better known as Kir wan, " forms one 
of the most remarkable chapters in the history of the Church 
of God. John Wesley was born in 1703. In May, 1739, 
the corner-stone of the first Methodist church ever erected 
was laid in Bristol, and already has the Methodist Church 
become one of the great religious powers of the world. 
With but little wealth— greatly persecuted at the beginning 
— with a ministry always adorned with great minds, but 
mainly uneducated — it has extended itself through Britain 

27 London Quarterly Review, vol. li., pp. 117-118, a.d. 1834. This 
appeal has excited the sympathy of the English Methodists ; but it is im- 
possible for them, or for any human power, to save the Church of Eng- 
land. When it rejected Wesley, it rejected its salvation ; and now, like 
the Jewish Church after the rejection of Jesus, it must suffer the conse- 
quences to the bitter end. The only thing left for Methodism in England, 
as has been shown on a former page, is to gather up what may remain 
(after the downfall) of the pious membership of the National Church, and 
then occupy the place which that Church has forfeited. 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 287 



and America; its missions dot the maps of Asia and Africa, 
as do the stars of the sky at night ; its ministers march in 
the van of emigration to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, 
and to the shores of the Pacific ; and wherever the anti- 
Christian nations are opening to the Gospel, there soon is to 
be found the Wesleyan missionary, ready to carry the light 
of life to the benighted. Deterred by no rigors of climate, 
its ministers may be found burning under the line and freez- 
ing toward the poles ; and fearing no privation, they may be 
found teaching the Indian in his wigwam, the African in his 
kraal, and the cannibals of the Pacific in their island homes. 
And whether agreeing or disagreeing with them as to their 
peculiarities, every Christian will rejoice in all that they are 
doing to glorify God or to save men. Although not collect- 
ing sheep into our (Presbyterian) fold, we thank God for all 
they are collecting into the told of Christ." 

In the same spirit, the ETew York Examiner, the organ of 
the Baptist denomination, in referring to Mr. Taylor's work, 
expresses the most kindly feelings toward the movement 
originated by Mr. TVesley, giving it as much honor as can be 
justly claimed by the warmest partisan : " The best trea- 
tise," says the Examiner, " which the age has furnished upon 
the rise and progress of Wesleyan Methodism, embracing a 
delineation of its features, and a clear view of the elements 
of its power, proceeded from the pen of Isaac Taylor, a dis- 
tinguished layman of the Church of England. That work 
exhibits a fine example of historical research and of appreci- 
ative criticism. It has already exerted a powerful influence 
on the public opinion of our times, in relation to the character 
and the aim, the broad scope and the moral dignity of that 
great religious movement, which was begun within the bounds 
of the English church by Wesley and his coadjutors, and 
which has proved itself to have been Goal's appointed, 
instrumentality for rousing the English people from 
the slumbers of a deadly formalism, and imparting to 



288 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



millions of our race in all lands^ the spirit of vital 
Christianity." 

With equal candor, the Unitarians of this country have 
often acknowledged the indebtedness of the world to Metho- 
dism. The Christian Examiner, in a recent article, sums up 
its past history and future prospects in the most liberal man- 
ner: 

" Methodism," says the Examiner, " has had a grand 
mission to fulfill in modern Christendom ; a mission of media- 
tion, we might say, between differing sects on the one hand, 
and between an' exclusive church and a neglected world on 
the other. And there is a moral majesty in the firm and sure 
tread with which it has marched to the accomplishment of 
its work. 

"In dogmatics Methodism has always been a standing 
protest, or rather persuasive, against bigotry. We can will- 
ingly believe that the repugnance which the wise father of 
Methodism felt for theological controversy arose mainly from 
the twofold apprehension, first, that it would distract and 
deaden the practical zeal and efficiency of the converts, and 
secondly, that it might engender bitterness and pride. To 
•quote Mr. Withington's application of the text, he feared 
that a viper might come out of the heat. It is our opinion 
and experience that, of all Christian sects, the Methodists are 
those with whom, in their theological position, the so-called 
liberal Christians can most easily sympathize. Our chief 
practical difference in this respect would probably be, that 
controversy, which they dread as poison, we regard as the 
angel that stirs the pool of our Protestant faith, and keeps it 
from stagnating. Wesley carried his dread of controversy 
to such an extreme that, on one occasion, he laments that he 
had to ' spend near ten minutes in controversy with some 
Baptists, more than he had done in public for many months, 
perhaps years before.' For our own part, we do not believe 
that in the age which is coming, nay, which now is, it is 



CHARACTER Am) SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



2S9 



going to be quite practicable for Christian men to agree to 
use the same, even though they are Scriptural, words and 
phrases, when we understand them so differently as we do, 
without telling each other plainly, and asking ourselves dis- 
tinctly what we mean by them. We may call what this 
must lead to conference or co?itroversy, at any rate it is 
reasoning together, and in some form or other is an important 
help toward the attainment of the truth which sanctifies the 
soul. 

" But we honor and admire Wesley's degree of neutrality 
in so fir as it arose from his making the practical doctrines 
of religion and Scripture the essential ones, and the practical 
character of the dogma the grand test of its importance. 
Bravely has Methodism contended against the predominance 
of the merely speculative tendency in the Christian character 
and Church. And when we think of Wesley's position 
between Calvinism on the one hand and Pelagianism on the 
other, we do not remember a better illustration than he and 
his disciples afford of the pithy saying of 6 Lacon,' that £ we 
should act with as much earnestness as those who expect 
everything from themselves, and pray with as much earnest- 
ness as those who expect everything from God.' 

" The peculiar power of Methodism lies in the practical, 
wise, humane tendency of its efforts. 4 By their fruits ye 
shall know them' is its leading motto, and we believe it can 
well abide this test. No church, except the Roman Catholic, 
can compare with the Methodist in the active determination 
to do away the reproof that 6 the children of this world are 
wiser in their generation than the children of light.' Xo 
church has done so much (notwithstanding what has been or 
may be said about the despotic power of its hierarchy) to 
defend the doctrine of the equal sanctity of sincere ministers 
of God, whether formally ordained or not ; a favorite saying 
among Methodists is, that, 4 it takes the whole church to 
preach the Gospel,' (certainly then to perform it). 

13 



290 



OUTSIDE SOLUTIONS OF THE 



"Perhaps in no one quality did the founder of Methodism 
more nearly resemble his great Master than in that true 
wisdom which is born, not of fear, not of time-serving selfish- 
ness, but of God-serving love for the soul of man. That 
' wisdom from above ' was conspicuous in every word and 
step of this holy man. It inspired that eminent tact by which 
he felt his way along, desiring barely to follow Providence as 
it gradually opened. It manifests itself in his pithy com- 
ments upon incident and character — in the very neatness and 
nicety of his style of expression — in the pat use of Scripture 
texts. It was strikingly exhibited in the way {ingenious 
without ceasing to be ingenuous) in which he steered clear 
of the dangers that lay in the quietism of the Moravians, the 
Calvinism of Whitefield, and the ecclesiasticism of Charles 
Wesley, and in the eclectic spirit that got what was good 
from each, the quietness from quietism, the sentiment of the 
sovereignty of divine grace from Calvinism, and from ecclesi- 
asticism that reverence for ' Heaven's first law,' which made 
him for years cling to the hope of reforming the English 
Church without going out of it, and indeed to the day of his 
death unwilling to do more than provide against the future 
contingency 4 that Methodism would be compelled, sooner or 
later, to take an independent and permanent form.' 

"We are not sure that Methodism can be as successfully 
defended against the charge of a tendency (or liability) to 
bigotry in matters of Christian discipline, as in those of 
doctrine. Nobly, indeed preeminently, have the Methodists 
held forth and carried out the precept, ' Whether ye eat or 
drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all for the glory of God.' 
Strenuously have they contended for the infusing of religion 
all through the daily life ; but whether they have not been in 
danger of making the maxim read ' life for religion ' instead 
of 'religion for life,' whether they have not too often 
adopted too narrow and formal and precise an idea of what 
religion is, and judged other men's character and conduct 



CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



291 



with an unwise severity, is a question we are not prepared to 
answer in the negative. 

" Of one thing we are confident, that the Methodist move- 
ment will be so guided by a good Providence, as to be 
made a mighty help toward the reign of brotherly equality 
among men, and of that genuine and wholesome universalism 
in theology, upon which we believe the coming of that 
heavenly kingdom so much depends." 28 

Such are the outside opinions, pro et contra, of what the 
world once reviled, but now quite generally appreciates and 
respects, under the name of Methodism. 29 

28 Christian Examiner for March, 1859. 

29 If the reader wishes to look at large over the relation of the literary 
and religious press, of the higher grade, to Methodism, I will here furnish 
him with a summary of the more important references ; but, in touching 
upon the subject in the body of this chapter, I had to choose between 
throwing out the greater part of the collection of quotations I had made, 
or reduce each quotation to a scrap. I chose to select the leading repre- 
sentatives of public opinion, in their several departments, and then let 
them speak at some length for themselves and for those who are repre- 
sented by them. In the favorable quotations, I have furnished citations 
from those sources least likely to say anything on the behalf of Methodism, 
giving the reader the opportunity to infer what the more indifferent, or 
less unfriendly, portion of society would be willing to say, or has in fact 
said, respecting the Wesleyan movement. That I have presented a fair 
average of public opinion, on both sides, will be seen by a careful exami- 
nation, not only of the works I have referred to, but of the following pub- 
lications, which, though gathered, I have been unable to use in the 
foregoing pages : " Wesley Family," Westm. Rev. xix. 179 ; " John "Wes- 
ley," Am. Bib. Repos., 2d ser., ix. 388 ; "Wesley and the Methodist 
Church," Church Review, iii. 245 ; " Wesley and the Principles Developed 
in his Character," Kitto's Journal, iii. 1 ; " Wesley and Whitefield," 
Christ. Month. Spec, iii. 471-530; " Southey's Life' of Wesley," Christ. 
Disc, ii. 444, and Month. Rev., xcvi. 26 ; " John Wesley and the System of 
Methodism," Christ. Qr. Spec, i. 509, also viii. 353, also ix. 169 ; "Wesleyan 
Agitation, its Rise and Progress," Eccl. Rev., 4th ser., xxvii. 597; "Wes- 
leyan Takings," Eccl. Rev., 4th ser., x. 404; "Methodism," Christ. Rev., 
vL, 45 ; " Methodism as it is," Eccl. Rev., 4th ser., xx. 329 ; "Methodism 



292 CHARACTER AND SUCCESS OF METHODISM. 



in Wales," London Qr. Rev., lxxxv. 171, and Litt. Liv. Age, xxiv. 49; 
" "Wesley an Methodism," Month. Rev., cxv. 1, and Church Rev., v. 413 ; 
"Position and Policy of Methodism," Eccl. Rev., 4th ser., xiii. 64; '"Pro* 
gress and Policy of Wesleyan Methodism," Eccl. Rev., 4th ser., x. 196. 
I have a collection of several scores of similar publications, but a complete 
reference would be too lengthy for a note. 



CHAPTER VI. 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY : THE 
FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 

Having, in the foregoing pages, made a statement of the 
success of Methodism, and given the reasons assigned for 
that success by its outside friends and opponents, I come 
now to a discussion of the causes of its acknowledged pros- 
perity from a stand-point within the system itself. Being an 
individual connected with this movement, and having studied 
and observed it from this interior position for nearly thirty 
years, I wish to employ what intelligence I have in a candid 
and frank avowal of what I believe to be the leading causes, 
under God's special providence and power, to which it has 
been thus far indebted for its growth. I wish to call the 
particular attention of thinking men, not Methodists, as well 
as the thoughtful among ourselves, to an examination of 
these causes. It has been seen what other people have 
thought about the unexampled spread of Methodism. Some, 
viewing it from without, have thought it the offspring of the 
devil, either as a work of imposture, or of fanaticism; others, 
looking on it also from the outside, have thought it a system 
inspired and propelled by religious enthusiasm, but in itself 
good and beneficial ; and these two classes of people, from 
whom the great majority of the estimates of Methodism have 
come, have almost exclusively occupied the public with their 
opinions for the last hundred years. The time has now 
come, as it seems to me, for Methodism to speak for itself. 
Hitherto, it has been so engaged with its great work of 
preaching the Gospel, and of saving the world, that there has 

298 



294 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 

been scarcely a man to be spared for this secondary task. 
But the time urges that some one should utter what Method- 
ism has to say in relation to this subject; and there are 
persons enough prepared to listen — to listen with intel- 
ligence and candor — to any answer to this popular 
demand that shall be marked by the same characteristics. It 
is not the history of Methodism that these thinking people 
want. That they have had and read to their satisfaction, so 
far as the facts of Methodism are concerned. The history, 
indeed, is only a presentation of the great problem of the 
Wesleyan movement. The history is itself the mystery to 
be resolved ; and the only solutions of it, or at least the only 
solutions known extensively to the public, are outside solu- 
tions, made by persons who knew little or nothing of the 
interior spirit and power of Methodism. If only the spirit 
of a man can tell what is in the man, as the great philoso- 
pher of the New Testament has declared, so it is impossible 
for a person, however intelligent and laborious, not a part of 
a system, not dwelling within its bosom, to give of it a just 
and accurate interpretation. If Methodism is ever under- 
stood by the world at large, outside of its own pale, it will 
be understood by a revelation made from w T ithin itself ; and 
it is precisely such a revelation for which mankind have been 
looking for these many years. They want an autobiography 
of Methodism ; and they are willing to suffer the biographer 
to express his consciousness of the system he inhabits freely, 
and without the fear of being charged with egotism. It is 
egotism that everybody desires. Methodism has been in the 
courts for more than a century. Two classes of verdicts, 
and a variety of individual opinions, have been pronounced 
upon it ; but every epoch of its history — and almost every 
year has been an epoch — has proved the inadequacy of these 
judgments ; and now the courts say, in their embarrassment, 
as was said to Saul of Tarsus, " Thou art permitted to speak 
for thyself." This is the opportunity on which I seize; 



THE FIEST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



295 



taking the liberty given to Paul, I propose, also, to speak 
with freedom ; and, therefore, in this chapter, I shall endeavor 
to show that Methodism has had its wonderful success, in 
the first place, not because it is of the devil, or even a good 
thing worked by fanaticism, but because it is the recovered 
Ideal of original Christianity. 

A living American writer, who is both a philosopher and 
a Christian of great eminence, in a philosophical examination 
of the mental and moral capacities of man, furnishes a just 
conception of the true Ideal of the Christian system : 

" In order to preserve the other principles of human 
nature in the position which the great Author of that nature 
has assigned to them, and to render their action just in itself 
and harmonious in its relations, we have reason to believe 
that there was originally in the human constitution a princi- 
ple of love to the Supreme Beih"g. This affection, it may 
well be supposed, was entirely analogous, both in its nature 
and operations, to the other benevolent affections, possessing, 
like them, a two-fold action, instinctive and voluntary. It 
differed, however, greatly in the degree or intensity of its 
action, being rendered to its appropriate object, as might 
be expected from the unspeakably high and holy nature of 
that object, icith all the energy of which the mind teas capa- 
ble:' 1 1 

This position is sustained by a variety of substantial, if not 
irrefragable, arguments. In all our surveys of the human 
system, physical, intellectual, or moral, we find that, wherever 
the Creator has established a relation between man and any 
other object, he N has bound them to one another by a tie 
strong in proportion to the importance of their relationship. 
As physical beings, for example, we must have food ; and, 
consequently, God has given us what we call an appetite for 
food. • As intellectual beings, we have great want of know- 

1 Dr. Upham's Mental Philosophy Abridged, p. 395. 



296 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 

ledge ; and so, there is planted within us a natural curiosity 
to know. As moral beings, it is of the utmost importance 
that we follow what is right ; and, in exact correspondence, 
we are endowed with native feelings of approval of right, 
whether in ourselves, or in other persons. The same law 
holds in relation to man as a social being. As a father, it is 
necessary that I sustain and defend my offspring ; and God 
has, therefore, given me a strong impulse toward them in 
what we call the paternal affection. My children, in the 
same manner, are bound to me by a corresponding tie, which 
we style the filial feeling. Precisely so, brothers and sisters, 
and all the members, near and remote, of a wide family con- 
nection, are held in the bonds of domestic fellowship. There 
is a relationship and a duty, also, in every one of us toward 
the land that gave us birth and affords us protection ; and 
hence, we are all fastened to our native land by an affection, 
which is denominated patriotism, or the love of country. 
Besides, every individual is a part of the great brotherhood 
of man; and the consequence is, that, in spite of every 
selfish feeling so native to the human heart, every human 
being finds himself more or less swayed by the force of a 
personal sentiment, recognized by the word philanthropy, 
which is only a single term for what we call the love of the 
human race. It appears, then, that we are allied to all related 
objects, in respect to which we have any duties to perform, 
by modifications of the general principle of love; and the 
particular love, in any given case, is strong in proportion to 
the necessity and value of the relationship. The paternal, 
for instance, is stronger than the filial love, because the 
parent has much more to suffer and to do for the child, than 
the child has to suffer or to do for the parent. For the same 
high reason, the mother and her children are held together 
by more powerful feelings, on both sides, than commonly 
exist between children and their father. So, also, the love 
that binds me to my friend is weaker than the love by which 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



297 



I am connected to my wife, or to my parents, because the 
relationship is of less consequence to society, and involves 
less of duty. But if all these things are as here stated, must 
there not have been, in the original state of man, a love 
binding him to his Father in Heaven, to his Creator and 
Protector, without whom he would not have been, and 
cannot now exist a moment ; would the All-wise so nicely 
adapt every man to his fellow-man, in every possible relation- 
ship, and bind them all together in such unbroken order, for 
the purpose of inclining them by nature to the performance 
of their respective duties, and yet leave himself entirely out 
of the general system, while it is to him that we are more 
indebted than to all other beings, whose conscious influence 
we need more than we do all other objects, and toward 
whom, not only every duty, but every act of life, has alto- 
gether its most important bearing? Such a lack would 
destroy the order and the harmony of the universe. It 
would be as if the planets, and their satellites, of the solar 
system had been, as they are, all nicely balanced in their 
motions in respect to one another, but with no universal 
gravitation toward their common centre. The supposition, 
in the light of all analogy, is absurd. Love is the universal 
gravitation of the intelligent creation ; it is the connecting 
principle of the handiwork of God; it is the pervading 
element of all time and space ; and, before the harmony of 
the world was destroyed by sin, it not only held all human 
beings together in their individual relationships, by a 
strength proportionate to our individual wants, but held us 
all in close and felt relationship to him, whose character was 
to be our exemplar, and whose will our law. 

If this supreme love to God w T as the ruling passion of our 
nature, prior to the existence of human sin, it is the want 
of it, and of what follows from it, that constitutes the condi- 
tion of our present state. It is the loss of this paramount 
emotion, this intensest and mightiest of human feelings, 

13* 



298 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIAN ITY : 



that makes and marks us what we are as fallen beings. 
Our consciousness is a living demonstration that the great 
want of humanity is this high and all-controlling love ; our 
reason teaches us that, if we loved the Supreme Being with 
the greatest strength — with a fervor proportional to the 
relation existing between him and us — all other loves would 
be perfected, and every wrong and evil of the social state 
would be redressed; and to the same effect runs the tenor of 
the whole word of God. It is love that we have lost ; it is our 
loves that have been perverted ; and consequently, scarcely 
recognizing the existence and the claims of God, in respect 
to himself and to our fellow-creatures, mankind rush headlong 
into every form of sin. The fall of man is represented in 
revelation as a departure, a separation, from the living God. 
He is a branch broken off from the life-giving vine. He is 
a prodigal who, in despite of his filial love, has abandoned 
his father's house and set up life on his own account. Hav- 
ing lost their connection with the great system of creation, 
and with its centre, men are depicted as trees twice dead, as 
clouds driven by the winds, as wandering stars, sailing with- 
out direction through space, and destined to fall at last into 
the blackness of darkness forever. The great wickedness of 
the race is, according to the Scriptures, that they have for- 
gotten God : " The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all 
the nations that forget God;" and the entire economy of the 
first dispensation was established for the expressed purpose 
of keeping up a remembrance of man's relations to the 
Almighty : " Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul 
diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have 
seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy 
life ; but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons, specially 
the day that thou stoodest before the Lord tht God in 
Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the 
people together, and I will make them hear my words, that 
they may learn to fear iiE all the days that they shall 



THE FIKST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



299 



live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children." 
This recollection, reverence, or fear of the Lord is repre- 
sented as the beginning of wisdom ; and the loss of it, 
therefore, was the beginning of our folly. We are spoken of 
in the older revelation as haters of God, having lost the great 
principle of love ; and the Saviour makes the same accusa- 
tion against mankind : " The world cannot hate you, but me 
it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are 
evil." 

It being true, then, according to consciousness, reason and 
revelation, that the original state of the race was constituted 
and marked by love to the supreme JBeing, and that the 
generic idea of our present condition is that of hatred to our 
Creator — a hatred, however, admitting of a great variety of 
modifications and of all possible degrees — but a hatred, an 
opposition, a disobedience, which deranges the whole man — 
it is to be considered what Christianity proposes to accom- 
plish ; and we cannot look upon this question for a moment, 
with any measure of penetration, without seeing that the 
restoration of the race is the one great aim and end of what 
we all acknowledge as our religion. Its object is simply to 
restore man from what he is, as a hater of God, to what he 
was when he loved him with his utmost strength. Such is 
the plain and undeniable teaching of revelation. The Deca- 
logue was the creed, the Articles of Faith, in that original 
Church of the living God founded in Paradise, supported by 
the patriarchs before and after the Flood, reformed by 
Abraham and established by Moses in the wilderness of 
Sinai ; and the two Tables of it, containing our duties to God 
and to our fellow-man, seek only to restore to the members 
of that great communion the principle and practice of univer- 
sal love. So, when Jesus began his mission of founding the 
new and everlasting Church, he reduces the ten command- 
ments to their two general elements : " Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 



300 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 



with all thy mind : this is the first and great commandment; 
and the second is like unto it : Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself." He makes the distinct declaration that this two- 
fold principle of universal love constituted the substance of 
the former dispensation : " On these two commandments," 
he says, " haug all the Law and the Prophets." These com- 
mandments he subsequently condenses into one ; for well he 
knew that the man who should love God with all his heart 
would also love his neighbor ; and consequently, the one 
pervading idea, the one only foundation of the Church of 
Christ, is universal love. All hatred, anger, wrath, malice, 
must be put away. We are to love God. We are to love 
our neighbor. Nay, we are to love our enemies, and pray 
for those who do us injury. We are to be like God, who 
loved the world when in direct opposition to himself : " Ye 
have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love 
your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them 
that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you 
and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your 
Father which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on 
the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and 
on the unjust. For if ye love them that love you, what 
reward have ye ? Do not even the publicans the same ? 
And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than 
others ? Do not even the publicans so ? Be ye, therefore, 
perfect — [that is in love] — even as your Father which is in 
heaven is perfect." 

This is the fundamental principle of Christianity, here 
directly proclaimed as such by its great Author, and every- 
where supported by his inspired representatives. The most 
beloved of his disciples, who always sat nearest to his person, 
and who was commissioned to ask for explanations of his 
system by his less favored brethren, divides mankind into 
those who love, and those who do not love, God: "Beloved, 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



301 



let us love one another ; for love is of God ; and every one 
that loveth is born of God, and knoiceth God. He that 
loveth not, knoiceth not God ; for God is love." That is, 
God is love ; and we must first love God in order to our 
knowing him ; and the evangelist repeats the idea already 
quoted from the lips of Jesus, that, in love, the followers of 
Christ are to be to the world what God is to them : " God is 
love ; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and 
God in hi m : Herein is onr love made perfect, that we may 
have boldness in the day of judgment : because, as he is, so 
are ice in this world.™ And all this amounts to the simple 
declaration, that the object, aim, and end of Christianity is 
to remove malice from the human mind, and put in its place 
the sentiment, the feeling, and the practical demonstration 
of universal love. 

This being acknowledged — and it cannot be for one mo- 
ment doubted — it is plain enough that love is an exercise, 
not of the intellectual, but of the moral part of man. It is 
the work, not of the head, but of the heart ; and it is pre- 
cisely in accordance with this fact that the Scriptures every- 
where represent what we have called the work of human 
restoration, or what is generally recognized by the word 
conversion, as an operation upon and within the heart : 
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart " — 
M serve the Lord with all thy heart " — ' ; circumcise thine 
heart " — " the word is in thine heart " — " wisdom entereth 
thine heart " — " my son, give me thine heart " — <; the Lord 
looketh on the heart " — " the Lord trieth the heart " — 
* 4 wisdom resteth in the heart — i; a man's heart deviseth his 
way" — "he that pondereth the heart" — ,; I will give them 
a heart to know me " — " a new heart also will I give you, 
and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away 
the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart 
of flesh M — " keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it 
are the issues of life " — " repent, and turn yourselves from 



302 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 



all your transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your ruin ; 
cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have 
transgressed ; and make you a new heart and a new spirit " 
— these are specimens of the ordinary language of the older 
part of revelation ; they are the law and the prophets on 
this fundamental subject ; and the more recent revelation 
abounds with the same general idea of the work of grace : 
" Take my yoke upon you," says the great Exemplar of his 
system, " and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart." 
So the greatest of the apostles, who is the profoundest of all 
the commentators on the Christian system, tells his Jewish 
brethren that Christianity does not reject the doctrine of the 
circumcision, but that the circumcision of the new religion 
" is that of the heart." He represents Christians as the 
" living epistles " of their Redeemer, sent into the world as 
legible demonstrations of his power to save, and that the 
writing " was written not with ink, but with the spirit of 
the living God, not in tables of stone, but in the fleshly tables 
of the heart." He admits the importance of faith and hope, 
which take their origin in the intellect, but makes them both 
subservient to charity, or love, which is an affection of the 
heart ; and he will scarcely allow these intellectual operations 
to form a part of the experience of a true Christian, till they 
have passed through the alembic, which melts down the cop- 
per and the silver of the intellect into the golden current of 
heartfelt love : " For with the heart man believeth unto 
righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto 
salvation." Saving faith, in other words, is at last the work 
of the heart ; and a person has only to believe with the heart, 
and confess Christ before the world with his lips, that he may 
become, according to the language of Jesus and his commis- 
sioned representatives, an heir of God, a child of God, a 
member of that glorious household whose center is God, and 
whose connectional principle is universal love. 

So central and universal is this principle of love, in the 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



303 



Christian system, that Jesus not only expresses it in every 
variety of form, but he took special pains, just before his 
ascension, and after he had tasted death, to repeat it in a 
manner which could never afterward be forgotten. It was 
the last time that he met with any considerable number of 
his twelve disciples. Seven of these his friends had been out 
on the sea of Tiberias, engaged in their former business of 
catching fish. They had spent a day and a night on the 
water, but without success. They had taken nothing. In 
the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, within a hundred 
yards of the spot where the fishing-vessel then was, and 
asked them if they had been prospered in their work. They 
told him, but without recognizing who he was, that they 
had been unsuccessful, not having any meat. To inform 
them, therefore, who he was, as well as to make the occasion 
forever memorable, he wrought a signal miracle upon their 
nands. He commanded them to cast their net on the right 
side of their vessel, they having been fishing, it is presum- 
able, on the left. They obeyed, and their net was filled with " 
the largest fish of the little sea. John, the most loving of 
the disciples, and so the quickest to perceive any manifesta- 
tion from on high, exclaimed : " It is the Lord !" and Peter, 
the first-called of the disciples, and therefore regarding him- 
self as the head of his fraternity, as prompt to act as John 
was to see, leaped into the water and made his way to land. 
His brethren followed him in their little boat. They pulled 
their net out upon the rocks and secured their prize ; and 
then, looking up, they " saw a fire of coals there, and fish 
laid thereon, and bread." Jesus requested them to lay some 
of their own fish with his fish upon the coals ; and then he 
invited them to sit down with him and eat. When all this 
preparation had been made for the great lesson that was to 
follow, Jesus, addressing himself to the eldest of the apostles, 
said : " Simon, son of J onas, lovest thou me more than these ? 
He saith unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. 



304: METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTTAJSTTTY 



He saitli unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith unto him the 
second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me ? He saith 
unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He 
said unto him, Feed my sheep. He saith unto him the third 
time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me ? Peter was 
grieved because he said unto him the third time, lovest thou 
me ; and he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things, 
thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus said unto him, Feed 
my sheep." Thus, in this thrilling narrative, we have pre- 
sented to us the one paramount qualification, not only of a 
Christian, but of a shepherd over the flock of Christ ; and 
that one qualification, thrice repeated to make the value of 
it the more manifest, is love. 

Such being the Scriptural exposition of the great work of 
human restoration, and the substance of the Christian system, 
a thinkiug man cannot fail to see how admirably it is 
adapted to the nature of those whom it proposes to restore. 
Were our religion addressed originally and prominently to 
the human intellect, it would of necessity be a failure, as 
there are millions of the race entirely unfitted, in an intel- 
lectual point of view, to comprehend it ; it would then not 
be a universal religion but the religion of the few ; and with 
the few, indeed, it would be little more than a system of 
philosophical speculation. It would have the character, and 
probably the fate, of all systems of philosophy, which possess 
the common trait of being addressed to the human under- 
standing, and which have never been known, in a solitary 
instance, to reform the morals and purify the life of their 
adherents. Christianity, however, in appealing directly to 
the heart, strikes at the centre of our being, where it comes 
into perpetual contact with all the springs of human action. 
Gain the heart of any man, and you have the man himself, 
whatever be his physical or intellectual condition. The 
heart rules the head. ISTot only every jDhilosopher, but every 
thoughtful person, is conscious of the fact, that our rational 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



305 



part is always very liable to be subdued by that portion of 
our nature, which contains our appetites, propensities, pas- 
sions, and desires — which, by common consent, is styled the 
heart — but a majority of mankind are known to act upon the 
promptings of their hearts, even when these impulses are 
openly condemned by the clearest perceptions of the intel- 
lect. Our judgment may all the while condemn our life; but 
the life goes on, nevertheless, according to our desires. Where 
the heart lies, the whole man follows. However impotent, 
indeed, is every system of moral instruction and reformation, 
aimed mainly at the understanding — and this is the character- 
istic of all reformatory systems of human origin — that which is 
directed to the sensitive part of our existence cannot fail to 
have success. If men easily believe and yet more surely follow 
what they like, and avoid what they dislike — which is only 
saying that they generally act in accordance with their 
loves — how rational is the adaptation of that system, which 
begins its hallowed work by a re-creation, by a complete 
transformation, of the heart. The very moment that this 
controlling portion of our being receives into it again that 
love to the Supreme Being, which it had lost by sin, not only 
does it take command of our emotional and affectional nature, 
bringing every feeling into harmony with our relations to 
both God and man, but it passes onward and takes ultimate 
possession of the mental faculties, and of the physical habits ; 
for we naturally give our minds to what we love ; and the 
habits of body can in no case remain long opposed to those 
principles of conduct which our hearts admire and our 
reason sanctions. The only means, indeed, of gaining our 
whole existence even to a proper course of life, was to strike 
first and mainly at the heart ; for the animal life, which the 
Xew Testament frequently calls the soul, and the intellectual 
life, will almost as certainly follow its dictation, as both 
extremities of the needle of the mariner fall into line in the 
direction of their pole ; and it is a most significant fact, that, 



306 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 

\ 

in laying down the first and great commandment, which con- 
tains the law and the prophets, and which expresses the sub- 
stance of the Christian system, the Author of that system 
recognizes the nature and the order of human recovery as 
logically as the profoundest philosophy could even now sug- 
gest: " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 'mind !" 
This is Christianity ; this is our religion ; and this is the 
order of its work — the heart, the habits, and the head ! 

But this is looking at Christianity only as it is related to 
the individual. If, however, we turn our eye to it as the 
proposed means of social reformation, its nature and the' 
order of its progress will be equally admired. So far as 
society is concerned, indeed, it might be enough to say, that 
that which regenerates the individual is all that the world 
can want, as the world is only a mass of individuals. But it 
is the glory of Christianity to be perfect, in all its bearings, 
and to appear perfect, in every point of light. So, it not 
only makes every individual it controls precisely what he 
ought to be, by filling him with universal love, but it clears 
its own path to the most glorious success. That very love, 
which is its essence in the individual heart, is its power as a 
system of reform. The man who loves, that is, the truly 
Christian man, is the man of power in this lower world. 
There is nothing that can stand before this principle of uni- 
versal love. By it you are yourself subdued, chastened, and 
refined into a most gentle and welcome being. Every per- 
son is melted into a similar gentleness at your approach. 
Your friends feel the throbs of a noble admiration as they see 
you out in the walks of life. Your enemies — enemies because 
they have not yet known you — blush at their hostility the 
moment they behold you in your proper character. Anger, 
revenge, malice, are transformed into personal respect. Pre- 
judice gives way and passes off like the mist before the rising 
of the sun. Your strongest argument in your conflict with 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



307 



error is the demonstration of your love. Love has the world 
of humanity, and even the animal kingdom, at command. 
There is not a man that lives who can turn entirely away 
from him the soft but soul-pervading presence of your love. 
There is not a beast of your fields, however docile now, 
which has not been reduced to his present submissiveness by 
the discipline of love. Love takes the lion from his lair, 
raging with passion, and shaking revenge from his brinded 
mane, and plies him with her gentle art, till the roaring 
monster is as meek and playful as a lamb. The hissing ser- 
pents of the South, which encircle and crush the horse and 
his rider in their folds, or which steal their path of death 
through the cover of bush and brake, subdued and softened 
by the gentle eye of him who protects and feeds them, learn 
trust and gratitude to their keeper, leap with delight at the 
sound of his friendly speech, and wind themselves around the 
naked neck and shoulders of a woman, or the waist and 
arms of the child, in sportive twist. The very fish of the sea, 
and the insects that spin from our ceilings or creep about 
our hearths, have been taught to frolic for our entertainment 
by the manipulations of a kindly hand. The world, and all 
that dwell upon it, are held under the resistless supremacy 
of this cardinal principle of our faith ; it is this, which, in the 
progress of the great work of reconciliation of man to his 
Maker, has had such uniform triumph over every condition 
of mankind, in every age and quarter of the world ; and it is 
this before which the hut of the Hottentot, and the palaces 
of kings, and every order and variety of human ignorance 
and knowledge, with all the forms and degrees of this 
Avorld's happiness and wretchedness, elevation and depres- 
sion, imbecility and power, are destined, in the consumma- 
tion of its enterprise, to stand together on one common level 
of universal benevolence, beneficence and joy. Love, in a 
word, is absolutely almighty ; for, as the loving evangelist 
has boldly expressed it : " Love is of God, and God is love /" 



308 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY '. 

The genuine ideal of Christianity is, therefore, without a 
doubt, that it is a "work wrought by the power of God upon 
the human heart, in the course of which the speculative facul- 
ties of the intellect play but a meager part, if any part at all. 
Faith, I know, which the Apostle sets forth as the substance 
of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, has 
been very generally looked upon as an intellectual act based 
on what philosophers call belief; and some writers, whose 
theological training should have taught them better, have 
spoken of ordinary belief, that is, logical credence founded 
on evidence according to the laws of the understanding, as 
the first degree of Christian faith. But this position is 
entirely erroneous. Faith, as the Scriptures represent it, is 
not the work of the understanding, but of the moral part of 
our constitution. That very Apostle, who gives us this defi- 
nition of faith, and who was as profound in philosophy as he 
was experienced in Christianity, informs us distinctly that 
the act he defines is an act of the sensibilities, of the affec- 
tions, and not of the understanding : " With the hearty says 
he, " man believeth unto righteosness." He describes the 
work of conversion according to the same principle : " But 
God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have 
obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was de- 
livered you." The doctrine, which was that of love to God 
and man, was addressed to their hearts, and from their 
hearts sprang that obedience which constituted their claim 
to the recognition and fellowship of the apostolic church. 
The Great Teacher had given this same exposition of the 
work of faith : " For verily I say unto you, that whosoever 
shall say unto this mountain, ' Be thou removed, and be thou 
cast into the sea ' — and shall not doubt in his heart — but 
shall believe [in his heart, of course, as the belief 'must belong 
where the doubt does] that those things which he saith shall 
come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith." So taught 
all the apostles in the days of primitive Christianity. The 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



309 



case of the eunuch will be recollected. He was the treasurer 
of queen Can dace of Ethiopia. He had been on a religious 
visit to Jerusalem ; and he was returning through the desert 
of Gaza homeward in his chariot. Philip, a man of great 
piety and zeal, was sent to him by a direct impression of the 
Spirit. He found him reading from the writings of Isaiah. 
He expounded those writings to him, making them center, 
as they do, on the life and offices of Jesus. The eunuch was 
touched ; he made his submission to the doctrine opened to 
him by the evangelist ; and, beholding water near at hand, 
he exclaimed : " See, here is water ; what doth hinder me to 
be baptized ?" In other words, " why may I not now 
become a member of the Christian Church ?" Behold, now, 
the mark of conversion and the test of admission into the 
Church of Christ, as announced by an Apostle acting under 
the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit : " If thou 
believest," said Philip, " with all thine heart, thou mayest." 
The eunuch answered : " I believe that Jesus Christ is the 
Son of God." This was the convert's confession of faith — -the 
only creed required for his admission by an inspired Apos- 
tle into the Church of God — and the faith here confessed, 
according to the inspired record of the case, was the work, 
not of the understanding, but of the eunuch's loving and 
trusting heart. He was required to believe, with all his 
heart, the doctrine of Isaiah as explained by Philip, that 
Jesus of Nazareth was the long-promised Messiah, the Son 
of the living God. This faith, and this alone, he did at once 
profess ; and he was consequently received directly into fel- 
lowship with the heirs of eternal life. This is the same test, 
the identical profession, everywhere called for, and the only 
confession demanded, by Jesus and his immediate represent- 
atives. They present to the intellect no system of opinions ; 
they trouble their followers with no intellectual problems ; 
they hold forth to the candidates to church fellowship no 
articles, no creeds, requiring philosophical abilities and pro- 



310 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY. 

found investigations ; they ask them simply whether, in their 
hearts, they can and do trust themselves for salvation to the 
mercy of Jesus Christ, whatever they may know or not 
know, believe or not believe, in relation to any other ques- 
tion; and if satisfied that they rely solely on Jesus as their per, 
sonal Redeemer, they go no further, but admit them at once 
into the company and household of faith. They make a total 
separation between opinions and faith, between doctrines 
and religion ; for Jesus expressly admits that the Scribes and 
Pharisees taught well enough, while they knew nothing of 
that inward work, which he came to exemplify and deliver 
to the world : " All, therefore, whatsoever they bid you ob- 
serve, that observe and do ; but do not ye after their works ; 
for they say, and do not.'''' Their opinions and instructions, 
their creeds and articles, are right ; but they have not 
received and exercised faith in me. They believe in a Mes- 
siah ; but they do not yield themselves, in fact, at heart, 
by faith, to the Messiah when he has appeared. They have 
studied with great diligence the books of revelation and the 
writings of their leading authors ; they have meditated pro- 
foundly upon the great truths given them from the upper 
world ; they have made up very excellent summaries of reve- 
lation, which they cordially acknowledge, receive and pro- 
fess ; but all this gives them no claim to being my disciples. 
They believe all that is necessary, but have not faith ; they 
say, that is, profess, what is needful, but do not act ; they 
are yet Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, possessed of every 
intellectual qualification, but without that paramount, practi- 
cal and overwhelming love to God and man, which true 
faith recognizes as embodied and manifest in me ! 

So entirely was St. Paul possessed with this central idea 
of the Christian system, that, in the most elaborate and beau- 
tiful passage of his writings, he draws out the parallel between 
this principle of universal love and the other leading charac- 
teristics of the Christian life ; and he compares it with those 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF FTS SUCCESS. 



311 



gifts and graces of the mind most coveted by merely intel- 
lectual men : " Though I speak with the tongues of men and 
of angels, and hare not charity " — the Greek word for love — 
" I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling symbal." He 
sets it before faith and knowledge : " Though I have the gift 
of prophesy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, 
and though I have all faith, so that I could remove moun- 
tains, and have not charity, I am nothing." He gives it pre- 
cedence over alms-giving, or acts of beneficence to the poor, 
which superficial religionists are so apt to receive as the 
essence of the Christian life : " Though I bestow all my goods 
to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, 
and have not charity, it profit eth me nothing." He esta- 
blishes his position by showing some of the results and conse- 
quences of this love : " Charity suffereth long and is kind — 
charity envieth not — charity vaunteth not itself — is not puffed 
up — doth not behave itself unseemly — seeketh not her own — 
is not easily provoked — thinketh no evil — rejoiceth not in 
iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth — beareth all things — 
believeth all things — hopeth all things — endureth all things." 
That is, love is the soul and substance of faith, hope, patience, 
and of every Christian virtue ; it is utterly unselfish, prepar- 
ing its recipient for that kindness to our fellow-being, and for 
that submissiveness to the will of God, which have been 
before explained as the two great commandments of our 
Lord ; and it has the crowning value of perpetual existence, 
while every other element of our religion, even our faith 
and hope, which are finally to be " swallowed up in victory," 
is to pass away : " Charity necer faileth ; but whether there 
be prophecies — they shall fail ; whether there be tongues — 
they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge — it shall 
vanish away. For we know in part ; and we prophesy in 
part ; but when that which is perfect is come, then that 
which is in part shall be done away. "When I was a child, I 
spake as a child — I understood as a child — I thought as a 



312 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY 



child ; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." 
Every gift and grace, even of the Christian character, ex- 
cepting only love, which is of the nature of the eternal God, 
is only a temporary quality to be thrown aside, when we 
reach our " being's end and aim," as a child throws off at the 
threshold of his majority the habits of his youth. Faith goes 
with the other provisional arrangements of the present state ; 
" For now we see through a glass darkly " — the glass is faith 
— "but then face to face " — when the temporary aid to our 
spiritual vision will be thrown away : " Now I know in part ; 
but then I shall know as also I am known." The conclusion 
of the whole argument includes everything that can be said : 
"Now abideth" — for a final comparison — "faith, hope, 
charity — these three ; but the greatest of these is charity." 2 

2 Dr. Adam Clarke (Com. vol. vi., p. 264) considers this chapter the 
most important in the whole New Testament, and, among many profound 
and learned statements, makes the following general remarks : " Love," 
he says, "is properly the image of God in the soul, for God is love. By 
faith we receive from our Maker ; by hope we expect a future and eternal 
good ; but by love we resemble God ; and by it alone are we qualified to 
enjoy heaven, and be one with him throughout eternity," Dr. Cudworth 
(Infr. Syst. of the Universe, vol. i., p. 280) makes a very profound use of 
this chapter, presenting the principle of love not only as the essence of 
Christianity, but as the bond that connects man to God. Dr. Clarke, how- 
ever, according to my apprehension, in making Christian faith and hope as 
permanent as love, for a moment loses sight of the natures and offices of 
these two graces. Christian faith, as I think, is not that general expectancy 
with which we shall through eternity look forward to the unceasing deve- 
lopments of a never-ending system of revelation ; but it is simply the act 
of the soul in accepting Christ as its Redeemer; and hope is that looking 
after the fulfillment of his promises, during our period of probation till we 
enter upon our inheritance, which will then be superseded by fruition. 
Dr. Cudworth, too, in making love, as the perfection of human character — 
love to God and man — a dogma of the Platonic philosophy, is not sup- 
ported, I am certain, by any passage in that philosopher. Plato does say, in 
a score of places, that the highest excellence of God, whom he everywhere 
calls the Tb kyaObv, is his goodness ; and, in this respect, as well as for this 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



313 



There cannot be a question, indeed, that love to God and 
man constitutes the substance of the Christian character ; that 
it is the general virtue from which spring all the other virtues 
of the Christian life ; that faith itself, as well as hope, is the 
offspring of love, and not love of faith. The process of the 
soul's approach to God, psychologically speaking, is clearly 
this : First, the character of God, and his relations to us his 
creatures, whom he has not only made, but redeemed and 
sustained, is revealed in the Bible, and subsequently impressed 
upon the mind, again and again, by the agency of the Holy 
Spirit. Naturally, from our constitution, we have a sense 
that compels us, more or less, to yield our approbation to 
what is good and right, and to disapprobate what is evil and 
wrong. Working upon this sense, as well as upon other 
powers of the soul, the Spirit makes us see the goodness of 
the Lord, and the long-suffering of God, and to compare 
what we feel, by the same assistance, that we are ourselves 
with this glorious Being, thus producing in us self-condem- 
nation and a degree of admiration for this boundless excel- 
lence and perfection. Christ is then held up, by the con- 
tinued agency of the Bible pressed home by the action of the 
Holy Spirit, as the Mediator between us and God, who, by 
the appointment of the Father, is able to save us from our 
sins. God appears more and more lovely in this loving- 
work ; his character, as thus beheld, inspires us with greater 
degrees of admiration, which, in process of time, by the con- 
tinued help of the Spirit, deepens into love : " We love him, 
because he first loved us." We see how good he is ; what 
wonderful things he has done, not for our punishment, but 
for our recovery ; and, his spirit still working with our 

reason, he makes him (De Legibus lib. iv. and many other places) the 
uirpov ttuvtuv — the measure or standard of all things ; but the idea, that 
the substance of religion is love to God and 7nan, is an idea conferred upon 
the world by revelation ; and no man can even now understand it fully, 
till he learns it experimentally at the feet of the great Master. 

14 



314: METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 

spirits, we return love for love. And this love — this admira- 
tion of his character and of his conduct toward us — gives us 
confidence. We have confidence in him ; we have confidence 
in his plan of salvation ; we have confidence in the means set 
forth for our restoration; we have confidence in the great 
Agent sent here as the Representative of the Father; we at 
last, throwing away every other trust, cast ourselves upon him ; 
we accept of Christ as the " gift of God " for our recovery ; 
and this — this is faith. Faith is thus the work of God, and 
the consequence of love. Love is the prevenient sentiment 
toward God that prompts to the acceptance of the Son ; 
faith is the act, proceeding (by the help of God) from that 
foregoing sentiment, by which and in which the Son is 
accepted by the admiring, loving, trusting soul; the two 
states come so close together, and the one is so consequent 
upon the other, that they would seem to be coetaneous ; but 
the former is as really the precedent of the other, as the light- 
ning is the precedent of thunder. The flash and its report may 
seem to come together ; or a startled observer, or recipient, 
may think that he heard the report before he saw or felt the 
flash ; but a more perfect examination shows that the explo- 
sion must precede its audible expression. In like manner, 
whatever may appear to a careless or superficial observa- 
tion, love anticipates and prompts to faith ; and then, from 
the subsequent action and reaction of these upon each other, 
as well as from their joint and individual continuance and 
increase, follow all the Christian graces of the ripest Christ- 
ian character. But love is the beginning of this character ; 
love will also be its final result in heaven ; it is love that binds, 
and will ever bind, persons professing and possessing it- 
together ; it is love that binds them all to their Redeemer ; 
it is love that constitutes his connection with us and with his 
Father ; and the Alpha and Omega of it all — the beginning 
and the ending of this golden chain — is God, who himself is 
love. 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



315 



Individual consciousness may "be cited in proof of this 
Scriptural statement of the substance of the Christian system. 
It can be asserted without the risk of dissent, I believe, that 
there never has been a genuine case of conversion, where the 
regenerate man did not feel, as his first experience, that new 
and inexpressible good-will toward God, which prompts him 
to renounce himself and rely on God for his personal salva- 
tion. The next step in the process, according to the same 
testimony, is the actual reliance, the positive acceptance of 
Jesus Christ as his own Saviour, on whom he now depends, 
freely and fully, for present and everlasting safety. The 
moment this act is consciously performed, without a reserva- 
tion, there springs up in the soul, or there is imparted to it, 
that hope of eternal life, which, ever afterward, like a sure 
and trusty anchor, gives to the tempest-tossed probationer a 
sense of security which passes understanding, and which 
sometimes manifests its strength in exclamations of the most 
rapturous delight. From that blessed hour, these three ele- 
ments of the Christian life are found living together within 
the heart ; the good man, in speaking of his new condition, 
will sometimes talk about his hope, at other times of his faith, 
and then of his love to God and. his fellow-man; and it makes 
no difference of which he speaks ; for either one implies the 
others ; while all are required to make up the perfection of 
his character ; but it must still be recollected, that love is the 
beginning, and will be the heavenly consummation, of this 
spiritual and eternal life. According to the Apostle, it is 
charity that " believeth all things " and "hopeth all things 
that is, faith and hope are only certain states of love ; and all 
these states together, which constitute the maturity of practi- 
cal religion, let it be emphatically remembered, are not intel- 
lectual changes, or intellectual operations and experiences, 
but, according to the psychology of revelation, however the 
intellect may act in relation to them, are the workings of 
that part of our mental being which contains the sensibilities 



316 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 

and affections. Christianity, in other words, is not a system 
of opinions — is not an adherence to certain articles of belief 
— is not the result of any exercise of our intellectual faculties 
■ — but is a work wrought by the power of God's Spirit upon 
the heart. It is a restoration of that love to the Supreme 
Being, the loss of which left a derangement of our entire 
moral being, and by the recovery of which the whole man is 
again set right. 

It cannot be said, I know, that the intellectual faculties 
have no connection whatever with this work. Nor need this 
be said ; for, if the intellect has ever so much to do with it, 
the result is not an intellectual state. Because an emotion, 
or a passion, requires a foregoing perception and reflection, 
which are undeniably intellectual operations, the emotion, or 
the passion, does not therefore cease to be an experience of 
the heart, and become a state or condition of the head. 
Were such a conclusion logical, it would be logical to say, 
that every perception, and every act of reflection, is a sensa- 
tion, as it is certain that perception and reflection begin 
with the senses by having sensations for their objects. By 
the same law of reasoning, not only all states of the intellect, 
but all the experiences of the heart, become sensations ; for 
all the feelings are traceable through the intellect to those 
sensible impressions made upon us by material things ; and in 
this way, too, sensations, perceptions, reflections, and emo- 
tions, and desires — everything there is in us — become mate- 
rial, as our whole inward life, when traced backward to its 
occasions, is followed out of us through the senses to the 
material world. But this is no Christian exposition of the 
subject. This would be infidelity ; and it would be a form of 
infidelity which has been forever overthrown by the tri- 
umphs, not only of religion, but of philosophy, which, what- 
ever may be the origin of our mental states, or whatever 
mental states may precede other states, makes as much dis- 
tinction between feelings and thoughts, as it does between 



THE FIP.5T CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



817 



reflections and perceptions, or perceptions and sensations, or 
sensations and the material objects, from, which the sensa- 
tions are derived. The apple implies the preexistence of the 
bud ; the bud, the twig ; the twig, the limb ; and the hmb, 
the tree ; bnt we do not, for this reason, confound all these 
objects together, and make the fruit identical with its pre- 
cedents. So, whatever service may be performed for the 
affectional nature by the intellect, in the great work of con- 
version, the work itself is a resulting state and condition, 
not of the understanding, but of the regenerated heart. 

Xor do we find, indeed, in the most persevering researches 
in this direction, that a man's moral condition is very often 
the logical result of his intellectual state. "Were this so, the 
most knowing men would be the best men ; for their know- 
ledge gives them more correct opinions than are held by the 
ignorant ; and these opinions, for the same reason, should 
have the greater weight with them, as they are so much 
more capable of perceiving their true bearings and impor- 
tance. The truth is, on the contrary, that opinions have but 
very little influence upon the moral conduct, or condition, of 
mankind. The Greeks and Romans, as is well known, not 
only believed in gods of very immoral character, but even 
worshipped them, and yet, in thousands of instances, without 
contracting the vices of their deities. In the same way, there 
are millions of men now living in Christian countries, who are 
logically convinced of every article of the Christian system — 
who believe in God. in Christ, in the ofiices of the Spirit — 
who record repentance, faith, and love among the most sacred 
of human duties — who, nevertheless, are as wicked in heart 
and life as any race of heathen. There is something remark- 
able in this want of connection between what is called theo- 
retical belief and actual conduct. Bishop Berkeley, a very 
profound philosopher, reasoned himself into a denial of the 
existence of matter ; but he was as particular about his din- 
ner as other people. A distinguished Presbyterian clergy- 



318 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY: 



man' of this country, one day preached a powerful discourse, 
as president of one of the branches of the national society 
called the American Evangelical Union, in which he shed 
tears over the " un charitableness and dissensions " of religious 
denominations, and the next day, or next evening, delivered 
another discourse before the General Assembly of his church, 
in which he denounced all persons holding the Arniinian 
theology as " arrant fools." In the one case he was speak- 
ing from his head ; in the other, from his heart ; and it is 
wonderful how small an influence is exerted by our theories 
upon our practice. Get possession of the heart, and it car- 
ries the understanding, and the life of both soul and body, 
with it ; but you may have the most perfect control over the 
physical and intellectual man, without any perceptible or 
practical effect upon his conduct. 

We thus learn, that it is not only impossible to reform 
mankind by making our attacks upon their understanding, 
and that Christianity pursues the only practical method of 
reformation, but that a good Christian life, flowing from a 
warm and loving heart, is possible to a man who entertains, 
intellectually, very erroneous opinions. His opinions, indeed, 
though he argue for them with the vehemence and pertina- 
city of Bishop Berkeley, may have no influence whatever 
upon his practice. I had once a neighbor and a friend, who, 
in argument, was accustomed to defend capital punishment 
with great earnestness ; he made his position on the subject 
a kind of hobby ; he would denounce with terrible severity 
all such as maintained a milder course of punishment ; I used 
to shudder, sometimes, to hear him express his sanguinary 
views ; and I thought him, though possessed of many excel- 
lences of character, a sort of Draco at heart, until I heard 
his wife relate how they lived several days without meat, on 
a certain occasion, because her husband could not kill a 
chicken. His reasoning was from his head, not his heart- 
He thought like a lion, while he felt like a lamb. Sometimes 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



319 



the order is reversed. Men will feel intense anger, revenge, 
malice, but keep themselves calm, and even acquire reputa- 
tion for gentleness, by exercising upon themselves a superior 
intellectual control. It is said that Richard of the Lion Heart, 
who could ride unmoved through the bloodiest of his battles, 
used to weep on hearing the report of his officers at night. 
The abilities of a warrior are oftentimes only intellectual 
abilities ; war is his profession ; he fights by rule and plan ; 
but his heart relents when the day's work is done. Alex- 
ander the Great, who waded to universal empire through 
seas of blood, was not a bloodthirsty man, while Julius 
CsBsar, the destroyer of his country's liberties, was at heart 
a patriot. History is full of contradictions of this nature. 
The world is full of them ; and they exist in relation to re- 
ligion, as frequently and as prominently as in regard to secu- 
lar and philosophical concerns. Mankind are everywhere 
thinking, reasoning, judging in one way, while they are feel- 
ing and living in another. St. Augustine maintained in his 
writings, as well as in his oral discourses, that God had so 
settled, determined, and fixed the plan of his creation, that 
every motion of matter and every operation of the human 
mind were as fast as fate ; and yet, in those very productions, 
written and unwritten, when touching upon practical affairs, 
addressed men as if he considered all their acts exclusively 
their own. Precisely so, John Calvin and his followers of 
every school, will hold up in argument the dogma, that God 
from all eternity has established and limited the number of 
human beings to be saved; that that definite number can 
neither be diminished nor increased by anything that any 
person, or the whole world, can do ; and yet, when the 
argument is over, they will urge men to repent, believe, and 
be saved, as if their salvation depended, as it really does, 
entirely on themselves. And these things being so, why are 
we not compelled, in simple consistency, to extend the ap- 
plication of this principle to every contradiction of this kind ? 



320 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OE CHEISTIAXITY '. 



If so absurd a theory as this Calvinism can hold its place in 
a man's intellect, without discouraging and freezing up his 
heart, why may not another man be a real Christian, while 
he maintains, intellectually, other opinions however contra- 
dictory and absurd ? May not a person theoretically be- 
lieve, that God is pledged to save all mankind, without the 
smallest effort of their own, and yet, practically, exert him- 
self to " work out his own salvation," as if his recovery be- 
gan and ended with himself? May not another, who denies 
the equal deity and dignity of Jesus Christ, while reasoning 
upon the subject, nevertheless regard him, however absurdly, 
as a sufficient Saviour unto all such as put their trust in him, 
and thus be saved in spite of this theological contradiction ? 
May not the Roman Catholic, who, in theory, puts the priest 
in the place of Christ, and goes to him for a dispensation of 
his sins, at the same time so look through the entire ma- 
chinery of Romanism to the Son of God, the great High 
Priest whom the system of his denominational priesthood 
professes to represent, as to secure a salvation which holds 
its seat, not in the intellectual division of our nature, but in 
the heart ? Are we not bound, in other words, to make a 
wide distinction — a distinction with a difference — between a 
man's opinions and Ms religion f May not the one be even 
exceedingly erroneous, even heterodox, while the other is 
evidently a work wrought upon his moral nature by the 
Spirit of God, according to the genuine experience of all 
Christians ? Are we not compelled, in fact, in settling the 
question whether a person has or has not true religion — 
whether he is or is not a real Christian — to lay aside Ins 
opinions, his belief, his articles of faith, and look altogether 
at the state and condition of his heart ? Will any one pre- 
tend to say, with all the facts of the case before him, that it 
is impossible for a man to love God supremely and his neigh- 
bor as himself — that is, to be a Christian — while he has 
superficial and unsatisfactory views, and holds opinions logi- 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 321 

catty contradictory to his actual condition ? But if such a 
thing be possible, then a man's creed is no longer to be con- 
sidered an indispensable part of his religion. He may have 
religion with a very poor, shallow, unscriptural creed. He 
may have religion with no creed at all. A creed is nothing 
in the world but an intellectual statement of what are sup- 
posed to be the essential elements of the Christian system of 
personal salvation. It is not the fact, nor does it include the 
fact, of our actual condition in religion. It is only our ex- 
planation of that fact. But the fact may exist, and does 
exist, with a very poor explanation, or with none whatso- 
ever. And it is a matter of experience and observation, as 
well as of logical inference, that the great mass of real Christ- 
ians, who subscribe their names to their several explanatory 
articles of faith, never comprehend, nor even try to compre- 
hend, the particular explanation they profess of their own 
heartfelt condition. What their hearts feel, and what they 
know by the testimony of the Holy Spirit within their hearts, 
is their real reliance for their personal satisfaction that they 
are Christians. They know that they love God ; they know 
that they love their fellow-beings ; they know that they feel 
a peculiar love to their brethren of the household of faith ; 
they know that they are striving to live a life of love — to do 
w^orks meet for repentance — to keep God's commandments — 
to rely every moment on the blood of Christ ; and they 
know that the Bible makes these the elements, and the 
criterion, of the true Christian character. They are thus 
satisfied, caring but little about their creed, or whether they 
have any creed at all. The denominations to which they 
belong might change these articles of belief, these systems 
of theological opinion, these human statements of the work 
of God upon the heart, and change them every year, or 
every day and hour, without affecting in the least the daily 
and hourly experience of those who live this life of love, not 
by any nutriment from these intellectual expositions of their 

14* 



322 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 

state, but by faith on the Son of God. Not only so, but 
these theories of salvation, these systems of opinion, and 
the opinions themselves, might be entirely dispensed with, 
overlooked, and abolished, without producing the slightest 
influence upon the religion, or religious state, of those con- 
cerned. It is this religion of the heart, indeed, independent 
of all theories of explanation, and in spite of numerous con- 
tradictory, illogical, unscriptural explanations existing in the 
theologies of opposing denominations, which has preserved 
through all ages, and down to our own times, a true apos- 
tolic church, consisting of those of every name whose hearts 
were filled with love, faith, hope — who had become new 
creatures in Christ Jesus — and who did not confound their 
religion with their opinions. This small but illustrious line 
of real Christianity can be traced to the very days of the 
apostles ; through the apostolic era it can be followed to the 
ministry of Jesus ; and there we find its prototype in the 
person of the man born blind, who, when his blindness had 
been removed by the miracle wrought upon him, would not 
be compelled to give his opinion in relation to it, but con- 
fined himself to a simple statement of the fact : " One thing 
I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see." 

Christianity, indeed, was at the first universally regarded, 
not as a set of opinions, but as a work of regeneration 
wrought upon the heart. It was not a great logical conclu- 
sion drawn from premises found in nature or in revelation. 
It was a plain and simple fact — a fact felt within the soul — a 
fact which could be known by the regenerated man, who had 
intelligence to know whether he loved or hated his neighbor 
and his God. It was a fact including a change from hatred 
to love, from infidelity to faith, from fear and dread to a 
lively and living hope. It was a fact including all the graces, 
and all the joy and triumph, of the Christian life. It was the 
glorious fact included in the Saviour's proposition to NIco- 
demus — 11 Thou must be born again;" and it was such a 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



323 



fact, that it must not only convince the subject of it of its 
existence and character, but which the most skeptical of the 
world could not ultimately deny. The world did at the first, 
it is true, like the Pharisees at the examination of the blind 
man, undertake to maintain an absolute denial of the fact ; 
and there has been a portion of mankind in every age, who 
have refused to concede the statement, that a man may, or 
that men do, experience what is called regeneration, or a 
change of heart and life. But a very large remainder of the 
world, including its profoundest thinkers, compelled by the 
evidence of human testimony, as well as by personal observa- 
tion, have admitted the possibility, and the existence, of this 
change ; but, instead of satisfying themselves with seeking 
and obtaining an experience of the work upon themselves — 
the only thing essential to their salvation and to their peace 
of mind here or in the world to come — they have set it up as 
a problem for universal speculation ; and then, what is yet 
more deleterious to the cause of genuine Christianity, they 
have gradually substituted their opinions of the fact for 
the fact itself \ This work of corruption began in the very 
days of the apostles. Their age was an era of knowledge and 
of curiosity ; it was an era of peace ; the ages of war and 
tumult had passed away ; mankind had little to do but to 
read, think, and reflect upon questions of permanent or 
momentary interest ; and this question about the Christian 
religion — the great fact of the regeneration of a man's moral 
nature — became the particular problem of general study and 
investigation. The existence of a heart-felt religion being 
admitted as a fact, both by Christians and Pagans, speculative 
men everywhere undertook to explain it to their personal 
satisfaction. Their several explanations, of course, would 
correspond to their respective theories of philosophy which 
included all questions relating to God, man, and nature. 
The atheistic philosophers, Greek, Roman, and oriental, as 
they have done in every subsequent period, followed the 



324 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY '. 



whole of this heartfelt experience to material causes, and 
gave of it a material solution, or made it the object of their 
laughter. The theists, on the other hand, consisting of those 
called Gnostics and of the Greek and Roman disciples of 
Thales of Miletus, the first man of Greece to acknowledge 
and maintain the existence of an immaterial and therefore 
immortal soul, offered for this Christian fact a variety of 
explanations, all of them, however, making God the Father 
the author of the change, of whom Jesus of Nazareth was 
the representative, but not his equal. The Christian body 
itself, made up of learned and unlearned, but principally of 
those classes which did not enjoy the benefits of education, 
soon received into its communion persons of eminent abilities 
and great knowledge, who, prior to becoming Christians, 
had been philosophers of reputation ; they brought their 
habits of speculation, and the speculations themselves, with 
them ; and the result was, that, before the close of the 
second century, the Church of Christ, which commenced as a 
company of men and women professing love to God and man 
without any theories of its origin, nature and operation, was 
divided into parties ranged under the respective champions 
of these intellectual expositions. Those of the thinking con- 
verts who had been Jews were determined to make such an 
explanation of the work wrought upon them, as would leave 
Moses and the Law in a respectable position, while the 
believers of Pagan origin had their temptations so to explain 
the religion of their new Master as to give as little umbrage 
as possible to those whom they had been accustomed to 
respect. The very object of their ecclesiastical organization, 
the conversion of the world, forced upon the early Christians, 
as they thought, some rational explanation of what they felt 
within them. They wished to recommend religion to those 
around them ; and it was natural that, when met by the 
prejudices of the world, they should endeavor to give such 
an account of their new condition as would best satisfy those 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



325 



whom they desired to benefit. Controversies, also, were 
soon started, not only within the body of the church, itself, as 
at Antioch in relation to circumcision, but between the great 
defenders of the church and their Jewish and Pagan assail- 
ants, who were busy with such solutions of the work they 
beheld, as they were prompted to make by the systems of 
speculation which they had adopted. The opinions of those, 
therefore, outside of the Christian body, who desired to give 
some account to themselves of its remarkable phenomenon 
of conversion, and the opinions of the more celebrated 
Christian doctors, who naturally wished to satisfy this class 
of persons, as well as to make their religion generally 
acceptable, soon became prevalent in the Church of Christ. 
There at once appeared, in consequence, a Judaizing 
Christianity, which was marked by the pomp and show of an 
august ritual, and by a general leaning, in its own expla- 
nation of itself, to Jewish ideas. The oriental philosophy, 
which w T as divided into several sects, and which made 
creation and every important being in it an ceon, or emana- 
tion, from the origiual creator, of which the oriental philoso- 
phers and. the Hebrew patriarchs and teachers, including 
Christ himself, were exalted specimens, arose among the 
disciples of Jesus with a variety of intellectual theories of the 
new birth professed by Christians. Then sprang up within 
the church all the divisions and subdivisions of the Roman 
and Greek philosophy, a contradictory mass of metaphysics, 
each section vying with every other in furnishing rational 
and satisfactory solutions of the great Christian mystery. 
The consequence of this state of things was war — war 
between the church and the speculative world — and war 
among the theorizing doctors of the Church itself. So early 
even as the second century, there was a furious controversy 
begun between the Christians and the Jews, at first carried 
on in behalf of the Church by Justin Martyr and Tertullian, 
and afterward by Origen, Arnobius, Cyprian, and Minutius 



320 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTTAXITY I 



Felix, in which too many concessions to Judaism were made 
by men professing to defend the simple doctrines of the 
Cross. The controversy with the Paganism of the Roman 
empire was also a bitter one, and was managed, on the part 
of the Christians, by Athenagoras, Melito, Tatiau, Clemens 
of Alexandria, and Origen, who, with all their zeal for 
Christianity, seemed not to understand its real character, 
treating it mainly as a system of intellectual dogmas. Origen, 
also, the most learned and able Christian between the death 
of the apostles and the establishment of Christianity as the 
national religion of the empire of Rome, was the champion 
of the Church against the leading sects of the classic philoso- 
phers ; but he had been himself a philosopher of the Platonic 
school ; and, though evidently a converted man, he took 
pride in proving to the world, and especially to the party he 
had left, that the Christian religion could be entirely 
accounted for and explained by those precepts laid down by 
the sage of Acaclemus. Plato had divided his doctrines into 
exoteric and esoteric, and his school at Athens into corres- 
ponding departments ; and Origen, therefore, had a literal 
and a mystical interpretation for every passage in the Bible. 
Plato, making matter and mind equally eternal, and matter 
the evil principle in nature to be overcome at last by mind, 
had represented the human body as the prison of the soul, 
which had the right to break the material bars and fetters by 
every possible severity to the physical frame, till the purified 
spirit should be released from its material thralldom. So 
Origen, applying the doctrine to Christianity, and taking 
advantage of every expression of the Isew Testament enjoin- 
ing self-denial, introduced into the Church of Christ those 
austerities, which subsequently became the discipline of the 
Roman Church. Plato had taught that only the most 
illustrious characters ascended directly to a place of felicity 
and light, immediately after their decease, while the general 
mass of even moral and good men sunk to an inferior region, 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



327 



where they remained till fitted, by the most painful efforts 
and abstemious regimen, for a loftier residence. Origen, 
bowing to this dogma, introduced the novel doctrines of 
purgatory, of the purification of the soul after death, and the 
possible restoration of the race through the instrumentality 
of future suffering. In the same way, he proceeded to 
explain the simple phenomenon of salvation by Christ, till 
Christianity utterly disappeared ; and such was his genius, 
his learning, his eloquence, and his influence among the 
doctors of the church, that his Platonizing system was soon 
generally received by the better educated classes of Christ- 
ians in every quarter of the world. And thus stood the 
Church of Jesus Christ, with constant fluctuations, however, 
as it was acted upon by outside events, till the conversion of 
Constantine made it, with all its internal and external contro- 
versies, the established and only religion acknowledged and 
protected by Roman law. 

From that period the fortunes of Christianity are well 
known. At first, Constantine wished to reconcile his heathen 
subjects to the doctrines of the Cross ; and the leading 
divines set themselves to work, in gratitude to their sover- 
eign, to accommodate, more completely than before, every- 
thing connected with their religion to the prejudices of all 
ranks and nationalities of the Roman world. Discouraged 
with the slow progress of this enterprise, and stimulated by 
the more pugnacious of the bishops, the emperor at length 
made a general profession of Christianity obligatory upon all 
his subjects ; and, by this means, there was taken into the 
Church, at one fell sweep, all the superstitions of Gentiles 
and Jews, of the philosophers of every sect, and of the igno- 
rant multitude full of ridiculous fancies and ready for every 
idle dream. But Constantine soon passed away; and his 
place was supplied, in the year 362, by Julian, who had been 
a Christian, but who gradually returned to the worship of 
his Pagan ancestors. The Christian doctors were now com- 



328 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY : 

pelled to lay aside their labor of reconciling a recusant popu- 
lation to a religion which they were unwilling to understand, 
and to enter again into those controversies, which had been 
partially neglected during Constantine's more quiet reign. 
Platonism, however, continued to be the leading corruption 
of the truth ; but it took a great variety of positions, and 
passed through several changes, till it was at last under- 
mined by the philosophy of Aristotle ; and then began, from 
these causes, and from the irruptions of the northern barbar- 
ians, to whom the Christian doctors were as pliant as they 
had before been to the more civilized Roman population, 
that long regime of intellectual and moral darkness, which is 
known in history as the Middle Ages, and during which the 
purity and simplicity of the religion of Jesus were lost 
amidst the pomp, and splendor, and power of the now 
mature and world-wide Establishment of Rome. 

Such, as every one knows, is a succinct but truthful state- 
ment of the history of the spiritual Church of Christ, to the 
birth of Martin Luther ; and the apostasy of the whole 
Christian world began, as is equally well known, in these 
attempts of mankind, within and without the Church, to give 
such an exposition of Christianity as should be conformable 
to the dictates of human reason, because they would not be 
satisfied to receive it as the mysterious but conscious work 
of the almighty and omniscient Being wrought upon the 
heart. The Saviour had warned the world of the impossi- 
bility of this task : " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and 
thou nearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it 
cometh and whither it goeth ; so is every one that is born of 
the Spirit." The pride of the human understanding, how- 
ever, acting with the causes that have been mentioned, pre- 
vailed over every caution. Philosojxhy demanded of Christi- 
anity an exposition of itself ; Christianity complied ; and the 
end was, the religion of Jesus Christ — the religion of hope, 
and faith and love — became a mass of intellectual and yet 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



329 



heterogeneous dogmas, delivered to the multitude in an 
extinct language, and set off with all the j)omp and show of 
a blind and unintelligible worship. Christianity, in other 
words, was reduced to Romanism, which has subtileties in 
abundance for the head, and the most liberal supply of indul- 
gences for the body, but next to nothing for the heart, in 
which vital Christianity both begins and ends by drawing 
the whole man in obedience to itself. 3 

This general condition of the Church of Christ continued, 
as has been remarked, to the days of Martin Luther, but not 
without several vigorous attempts, on the part of good and 
able men within its own inclosure, to reform it. There was 
a small number of ecclesiastics in the fifth century, scattered 
over Gaul, and Spain and Italy, and headed by the cele- 
brated Vigilantius, a man of extraordinary learning, elo- 
quence and piety, who undertook to recover Christianity 
from the lamentable corruptions which had enthralled it, and 
to bring it back again to the simplicity of its beginning. But 
they were met by such threats from the ecclesiastical author- 
ities, and so violently assailed by the publications of the hot 
and irascible Jerome, a powerful monk of their generation, 
that they were glad to save themselves from persecution by 
their silence. Other attempts of the same kind, though on a 
smaller scale, were made in nearly every century till the 
birth of Luther. The Nestorians undertook to reform the 

s The reader of ecclesiastical history must know how faithfully I have 
followed the great authorities in this rapid sketch of the fall of primitive 
Christianity : but I wish to add that I have made use of the best works 
only, particularly of Dr. Mosheim's Commentarii de Rebus Christianorum 
ante Constantinum Magnum passim, of Brucker's Historia Critica Philoso- 
phise a Mundi Incunabulis ad nostram usque Aetatem Deducta, and of Dr. 
Cudworth's Int. Syst. of -the Universe. These incomparable authors 
agree in the general statement, that Christianity fell into Romanism by 
attempting to reduce itself to a merely intellectual statement, the result 
of which was the substitution of opinions and ceremonies for the work 
of God upon the heart. 



330 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHBISTIAXTTY : 



Church in some respects, but were defeated. Anastasius and 
his followers inveighed against the worship paid to saints 
and to the Virgin Mary. The Iconoclasts of the seventh and 
several succeeding centuries, headed by Leo the Isaurian, 
were genuine reformers, though enrolled among the heretics 
by Roman writers; and Clement, an author of distinction, 
was pronounced heretical because of his attempt to get the 
Scriptures acknowledged as the sole authority in matters of 
religion. In the eleventh century, the famous Berenger, the 
most illustrious scholar of his day, raised a strenuous opposi- 
tion to the doctrine of tran substantiation and its consequents. 
Next came, in the twelfth century, the TTaldenses, the Hen- 
ricians, and the Apostolics, who denied the authority of 
popes and councils, making the Word of God the only rule 
of the Christian life, and the Christian life nothing but love 
to God and the human family ; and it may be added that the 
celebrated Arnold of Brescia, and the Petrobrussians, main- 
tained the original spirit and purpose of the Gospel. The 
tmrteenth century is memorable, in church annals, for the 
rise of several orders of professing Christians — the Fratriceili 
of Italy, the Beguins of France, and the Beghards of Ger- 
many — who. with kindred principles and intentions, endea- 
vored to reform Ronranisni of its superstitions, and to restore 
the primitive import and meaning of Christianity ; but they, 
too, were accounted heretics, and denounced if not silenced 
by the authorities of the papal Establishment. The Lollards 
in Germany, and the followers of TVicklif in England, were 
the reformers of the fourteenth century ; and such men as 
Martin Gonsalvo, Nicholas of Calabria, and Bart old de Ror- 
bach, in spite of some crude opinions, deserve to be num- 
bered among the great lights of our religion in this age, 
though their names figure but obscurely on the pages of 
church history. The fifteenth century, which immediately 
precedes the era of the Lutheran Reformation, abounds with 
the names of those who, at the peril of all things, labored to 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



331 



restore Christianity to its apostolic character ; the ecclesiasti- 
cal history of this century, as I think^ has not yet been writ- 
ten ; but the person who will take -the time to examine 
fundamentally, and in detail, the writings of such men as 
Jerome of Prague, John Huss, Herman de Patra, Pauius 
Anglicus, Laurentius Valla, Thomas a Kempis, John Gerson, 
Aeneas Sylvias, John Reuchlin, and the others of their class 
mentioned but not much employed by church historians, 
■would be able to see both sides of a great and growing sen- 
timent prompting to a reform of religion and the reduction 
of Christianity to its original purity and simplicity. It was 
in the sixteenth century, however, as the world knows, that 
all this preparation came to its maturity, and broke upon the 
nations of Europe like a sudden light from heaven. The 
leading idea of Romanism had come to be the efficacy of 
Christian works. Love, faith, hope, as the cardinal elements 
of religion, were still retained ; but it was everywhere taught 
that a man could possess and exercise more of these than 
were essential to his own salvation ; and the surplus of holi- 
ness of each good Christian was laid up in heaven as a sort 
of capital on which the pope could draw for the benefit of 
those of his subjects, whose vices happened to be more than 
equal to their virtues. This dogma of debt and credit had 
become the occasion of the most terrible corruption. Not 
only had the popes made use of these " treasures in heaven " 
for the purpose of absolving men from the most disgusting 
crimes, but also in the distribution of papal permits, called 
indulgences, for the perpetration of enormities of the blackest 
character. These indulgences had to be paid for ; the 
wealthy men of Europe had maintained a continual com- 
merce with the Vatican in paying up for past sins and in 
purchasing the privilege of sinning for the time to come ; 
and finally, just before the appearance of Luther on the 
stage, the reigning popes, rendered greedy by their former 
successes in this business, or reduced to necesssity by their 



332 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OE CHETSTIAXTTT '. 



costly vices, had sent their agents into the principal cities of 
the Roman nations to dispose of these indulgences to sin at 
public sales, which were conducted like a modern auction. 
Luther now arose and rebuked these shameful proceedings 
of the popes ; he even denied the premises on which the 
right of these papal permits was founded ; he declared that 
no man could do more than what his own duty and necessi- 
ties demanded ; he maintained that no capital arising from 
these imaginary works of supererogation existed ; and the end 
of the controversy was, after a great deal of angry discussion 
and threats of punishment, that the reformer came forward 
with the great idea of " Justification, not by works of any 
kind, hut by Faith alone on the Son of GodP^ 

4 I have said in the text above that the history of the fifteenth cen- 
tury has not been written ; and I will now say the same of what has been 
styled the Lutheran Reformation. That Reformation began away back 
soon after the papal system began to be established. That system had 
always its opposers ; and the history of this opposition is the history of 
the Reformation which found its consummation in the days of Luther. 
There is no topic, indeed, so needy of a complete and thorough treatment 
as this continual rebellion, by the really pious of every age, against the 
growing corruptions of Romanism. This, as I think, would be the true 
History of the Church of Christ on earth. It would include, as an accom- 
paniment, the development of the papacy and all the facts of Romanism ; 
but to make the papacy the leading idea of a church history, and to throw 
the glorious efforts of the Remonstrants of all ages into the shade among 
the heretics and schismatics, as is done by Mosheim and every other Pro- 
tectant and Roman ecclesiastical historian, is more than the Christian 
world ought to bear. Our Protestant historians, in fact, have written from 
the same stand-point as that occupied by the Roman writers ; and Mos- 
heim is thus entirely satisfactory to such men as Edward Gibbon. The 
truth is. a genuine history of the Church would be in general the History 
of its Heresies, as they are set down not only by Roman but by Protest- 
ant authors, for those called heretics by the Romans, who have been 
chiefly followed by our historians, were the Protestants of their respective 
nges. Taking these heretical Remonstrants and Reformers as containing 
the true Church, which, with obvious discriminations, would be consistent 
with the truth, let a history be commenced by some young man, of 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



333 



Great as were the services of Luther, and of his work, in 
the cause of Christianity, there is no need of misunderstand- 
ing his position. Did he, with all his heroism and labors, 
recover from the rubbish of Romanism, or from the sacred 
Scriptures, the true ideal of our'religion ? Does he anywhere 
maintain that love is the one glorious principle from which 
springs every Christian virtue, and on which is founded the 
whole Christian life ? Does he in any work, treatise, or dis- 
course, present love to God and man as the substance of our 
profession, and make faith and hope, with all their conse- 
quents, but the fruit of this universal love ? Does he hold, in 
any single paragraph, that this love, if evidenced by its legi- 
timate results, is the only test of the Christian character, and 
the only requisite to Christian fellowship ? What person, 
"who has ever read and comprehended Luther, will claim 
either of these things as forming any part of his important 
work ? The world knows that the beginning and the end 
of Luther's labor was the annihilation of the immoralities of 
Romanism by the doctrine of Justification by Faith. If man- 
sufficient abilities and education, who may live long enough to complete 
an undertaking more needed than any other in the field of letters. Such 
a work cannot be made up out of prior histories. The author of if must 
go to the original sources. He must read the writers of each age, and 
particularly the controversial writers. The philosophers and scholars of 
each century will be guiding lights, as they generally live above the super- 
stitions by which they may be surrounded ; but they could be trusted 
mainly as to facts falling under their observation, which, unless favorable 
to Komanism, Avould not be recorded by Koman writers. Such a history 
would include the revival of learning in Europe, the great discoveries of 
the fifteenth century, and every important event from the apostles to the 
present day, having any bearing on the preservation and ultimate spread 
of vital Christianity. There has always been, amidst the darkness, and 
corruptions, and apostasies of Christendom, a true Church of Christ, con- 
sisting of persons professing to love God and their neighbors, without the 
adulterations of theories and opinions. They have had a great work to do 
to keep Christianity alive on the earth. They have done it ; and now who 
is there that will undertake to write their History ? 



METHODISE! THE IDEAL OF CHEISTIAXITY '. 



kind were justified by faith alone, then their works were not 
laid up in heaven as a capital, from which the pope could draw 
for the emission and sale of bis indulgences ; nor could he thus 
remit past offences ; aud if this mercenary business were 
stopped, not only would the social corruptions of the Church, 
be reformed, but the system of popery itself would be under- 
mined. It was this particular tendency and bearing of the 
doctrine of justification by Faith that Luther insisted on in 
all his writings ; aud it was for this reason, and this alone, 
that he raised against himself the wrath and opposition of 
the Roman pontiff. "It must at the same time be observed," 
says Mosheim, speaking of the state of religion prior to the 
Reformation, " that the divines of this century disputed with 
great freedom upon religious subjects, even upon those which 
were looked upon as most essential to salvation. There were 
several points of doctrine, which had not yet been determined 
by the authority of the Church ; nor did the pontiffs, without 
some very urgent reason, restrain the right of private judg- 
ment, or force the consciences of men, except in those cases 
where doctrines were adopted that seemed detrimental to the 
supremacy of the apostolic see, or to the temporal interests 
of the sacerdotal and monastic orders. Hence it is, that we 
could mention many Christian doctors before Luther, who 
inculcated, not only with impunity, but even with applause, 
the very same tenets that afterward drew upon him such 
heavy accusations and such bitter reproaches ; and it is 
beyond all doubt, that this great reformer might have propa- 
gated these opinions without any danger of molestation, had 
he not pointed his warm remonstrances against the opulence 
of Rome, the overgrown fortunes of the bishops, the majesty 
of the pontiffs, and the towering ambition of the Domini- 
cans." 5 

Let it be particularly observed, that the fact of Luther's 



5 Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii.. p. 12. 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



335 



having taught the necessity of love to the fullness and perfec- 
tion of the Christian character is not here denied. He 
sometimes speaks of love as clearly as could be desired, mak- 
ing it the beginning and end of the Christian life ; but in 
other places he makes faith, without any reference to love 
whatever, the alpha and omega of practical religion; and 
then, in other places still, as in his sermon Concerning the 
Sum of the Christian Life, he treats of love, and faith, and 
works, as the cardinal elements of the life of a true follower 
of Christ ; but he confounds the order of them as laid down 
in the very passage which he uses as his text : "But the end 
of the commandment is love, out of a pure heart, and of a 
good conscience, and of faith unfeigned." The apostle fol- 
lows the order of nature and of all revelation, putting first 
the love of a pure heart, that is, pure or perfect love, then a 
good conscience, which is the consciousness (ovvetdrjoeGjg) of 
this love in our inward being and outward conduct, and 
lastly faith unfeigned, which springs up and completes the 
character of the Christian, though all its elements are but 
the different modifications or conditions of his love. It is 
true, St. Paul frequently speaks of faith without mentioning 
the fountain from which it flows ; he makes it the act, as the 
Saviour did before him, by which Christ is accepted and 
trusted for salvation ; but he nowhere disturbs the proper 
order and relation of these two states of mind : " For in 
Jesus Christ, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor 
uncircumcision, but faith, which worketh by love.'''' Luther, 
however, is not thus clear. In the discourse just referred to, 
he says, speaking of St. Paul's order of these graces : " In the 
first place, he places the sum of the whole law, or that which 
comprehends the whole law, in love ;" 6 and, speaking for 
himself, he remarks distinctly : " To the fulfillment of the 
law, there must be the whole that the law requires — and that 



Luther's Works, vol. i., p. 519. 



336 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 



is called charity ; and this kind of charity is that which flows 
forth as water or a stream, and springs out as a fountain from 
the heart, and is pure, and is accompanied with a good con- 
science and faith unfeigned ; and where there is such charity, 
it is true charity, and the law is fulfilled ; but where this 
charity is not, there is a wandering utterly out of the way of 
the law." 7 Nothing could be plainer, or more satisfactory, 
than this statement of the " sum of the Christian life." But, 
in the progress of the sermon, the reformer does not follow, 
nor remember, the order which he had at first laid down ; 
and in other publications, as in his treatise concerning Christ- 
ian Liberty, he states explicitly, that love proceeds from 
faith, which he makes the substance of the Christain charac- 
ter : "Thus you see," he says, "from faith flow love and 
gladness in the Lord, and from love a happy, willing and free 
spirit to serve a neighbor spontaneously." 8 He carries his 
doctrine of Justification by Faith, which he seems sometimes 
to handle as a hobby, to the very verge of extravagance : 
"Behold!" he says, "then, by this rule, whatever good 
things we have received of God, ought to flow from one to 
the other, and become common ; and every one should put 
on his neighbor, and so conduct himself toward him, as if he 
were in his stead. For all things have flowed, and still con- 
tinue to flow, unto us from Christ, who so put on us, as if he 
himself had been what we are, and from us they flow unto 
all that have need of them. And hence it becomes me to 
present my faith and righteousness before God, in praying for 
the pardon and the covering of the sins of my neighbor, which 
I ought so to take upon myself, and so to labor and travail 
under, as though they were my own — for so Christ died for 
us." 9 There is a touch of Luther's papal education in this 
passage; it is w r ell known, also, that there were several lead- 

7 Luther's Works, Vol. L, p. 518. 
b Luther's Works, vol. i., p. 29. 
9 Luther's Works, vol. i., p. 34. 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



337 



ing heresies of Rome, and one of her five false sacra- 
ments, which he never abandoned ; his substitution, too, of 
" consubstantiation " for " transubstantiation," was nothing 
but the confusion of popery worse confounded ; and it must 
be owned, that, in regard to the true Christian life, the sum 
and consummation of the Christian religion, he never passed 
beyond the double, doubtful, glimmering vision of the blind 
man, who had received one application of the Saviour's 
remedy: " He saw men as trees walking." But his greatest 
lack as a reformer, as a restorer of the true ideal of Christi- 
anity, lies in the fact, that he nowhere makes the Christian 
character, even as he understood it, the test and only test of 
church fellowship. He complains in many places, it is true, 
that the Romanists had crowded out love, and faith, and 
every work of God upon the heart, by their creeds, articles, 
and traditions : " They are occupied," he says, " with mere 
wandering and unprofitable opinions, or rather, with dead 
dreams ;" 10 and yet, in this respect, he goes right forward in a 
close pursuit of their sad example. They, for a thousand years, 
had received into their embrace every man who would set 
his name to the three creeds — the Apostolic, the Athanasian, 
and the Augustinian — whatever were his virtues or his vices, 
his internal state, or his external conduct. The new birth — 
love, faith, hope — had no influence in his reception among 
them, or even in his elevation to the highest offices. Let him 
swallow the three creeds, and attend the ceremonies of the 
house of worship, and he might be, without scrutiny, as rigid 
as St. Simon, or as profligate as the Borgias. Luther strug- 
gled for the purgation of the moral character of the Christian 
body ; he attempted this by the inculcation (with some want 
of apprehension) of the necessity of a true Christian life ; but 
the most perfect Christian life, according to his own standard 
— a life coming to the last line and letter of the command- 



Luther's Works, vol. i., p. 523. 
15 



338 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHKISTIAXITT I 



merit — was not enough to fit a person for admission into the 
societies he founded. A man might love like John, and have 
faith like Paul, and possess the hope of the King of Israel ; 
he might be, in fact, by the perfection of God's work within 
him, an accepted member of the Spiritual Church of Christ ; 
but, before he could be admitted into the Church of Luther, 
he must, after all his lore, and faith, and hope, subscribe his 
name to seventeen articles of belief, drawn up by the re- 
former, and known as the Augsburg Confession. It cannot 
be said, therefore, that the great Saxon recovered the genu- 
ine ideal of Christianity, which, under the administration of 
the apostles, received its members on a profession of a change 
of heart and life, by an acceptance of Jesus Christ, without 
the slightest respect to any theory of the work, or system of 
opinions. 11 

The successors of Luther followed, in respect to this sub- 
ject, very faithfully in his footsteps. His seventeen articles, 
technically known as the Articles of Targau, as Luther hap- 
pened to be in that city at the time of his drawing them up, 
were enlarged by Melanchthon, at the request of many of the 
leading reformers, into twenty-eight articles, or sections. It 
was, in fact, Melanchthon's, and not Luther's copy, which was 
presented and received at Augsburg; Melanchthon subse- 
quently made other alterations not consented to by Luther ; 
and there came a division of the reformation from this cause, 
those adhering strictly to the original draft being called 
Lutherans, and the other taking the name of Gernian- 

11 The reader will be further satisfied of Luther's position in regard to 
the necessity of subscription to articles of faith by his tract (Works, vol. ii., 
pp. 339-3*73) on the Three Creeds ; and yet (as in his Colloquia Mansala, 
p. 385) he everywhere considers a Christian the man who has accepted 
Christ : " To be a Christian," he says, in the place last referred to, " is to 
have the Gospel and to believe on Christ." And yet he rejected all Christ- 
ians who did not, or could not, believe his articles of faith, which he had 
derived mainly from St. Augustine, and which are substantially the same 
as those afterward set forth by Calvin. 



THE FIKST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



339 



Reformed. Both parties, however, agreed in the two main 
points : first, that true religion consists in the work of God 
upon the heart, very much as evangelical denominations now 
agree as to the importance and. nature of the new birth ; and 
secondly, that, though born again, and made a new creature 
in Christ Jesus, and manifesting all the graces and gifts of 
genuine Christianity, no person could be admitted into the 
communion and fellowship of the Protestant Church, without 
first putting his name to the one or the other of its creeds. 
Faith in Christ was not the test of membership ; but it was 
the belief of the candidate hi the opinions, or dogmas, agreed 
upon by the leading men. 12 

ISText to Luther and Melanchthon, the labors of Zainglius 
and Calvin, by whom the Helvetic Church was founded and 
established, were held in highest estimation in the days of 
the Reformation. Zuinglius and Luther agreed entirely in 
relation to what constituted a genuine Christian ; and they 
agreed, too, that persons acknowledged by them to be the 
true followers of Christ, loving God with all their hearts and 
their neighbors as themselves, as well as bringing forth the 
peaceable fruits of righteousness, were not to be received 
into the visible Church, until they gave in their adhesion to 

12 The chief objection made by Luther to Melanchthon's version of the 
Augsburg Articles was, that they conceded too much to Popery ; and I 
think that he had good ground for his opposition. Melanchthon's Augs- 
burg says distinctly : " Haec summa est doctringe qua? in ecclesiis nostris 
traditur. Et consentaneam esse judicamus et prophetic© ac apostolica? 
scriptura?, et Catholica? ecclesiae, postremo etiain Romanas ecclesia?, quate- 
nus ex probatis scriptoribus nota est. Atque idem judicaturos esse spera- 
mus omnes bonos et doctos viros. Xon enim aspernamur consensum 
Catholica? ecclesiae, nec est animus nobis ullum novum dogma et ignotum 
sanetae ecclesia?, invehere in ecclesiam. Nec patrocinari impiis aut 
seditiosis opinionibus volumus, quas Catholica ecclesia damnavit" This is 
very artfully worded; but, like many similar passages, it means too much. 
See Appendix Papers in Bower's Life of Luther, pp. 347-351, for the sub- 
stance of the Augsburg Confession. 



340 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 

the creed written out for them by their leaders. The unity 
of the Church did not consist, according to them, in that love 
which binds every man's heart to every other man's heart, 
and all hearts to God, but in their agreement upon a system 
of dogmatical opinions. They tried with great earnestness, 
indeed, to come to such an agreement. They met privately ; 
they held public discussions for this purpose ; they found 
themselves entirely harmonious on the only questions which 
formed the test of church membership in the apostolic era; but 
they differed in their interpretations of the language of the 
communion service ; and hence, without any other ground, 
they practically excommunicated one another, Zuinglius refus- 
ing to acknowledge Luther as the head of the Reformation in 
Switzerland, and proceeding to the formation of an inde- 
pendent church. 13 From that time, no man, though con- 
fessed to be fit for heaven and an actual member of Christ's 
mystical body, could be received into the Helvetic establish- 
ment, unless he held the same views of the Lord's supper in 
particular, as well as the Augustinian creed in general, as 
had been set forth by Zuinglius. Such was the test of mem- 
bership in the Swiss Church at the beginning of it; and 
Calvin, instead of relaxing the rule, proceeded to make a 
more stringent application of it than Zuinglius had intended. 
Not only did Calvin insist on the candidate's assent and sub- 
scription to the Confession of Faith of his denomination, 
whatever were the life and experience of the candidate, but 
he went so far as to vex and persecute such persons as were 
found within the territorial limits of Switzerland, who held 
opinions in opposition to those which the Reformation there 
had adopted. His confession consisted of twenty-one articles, 
written by himself and Farel, a fellow-reformer, which he 

13 For the best account of this famous controversy, see Seckendorf, ii. 
p. 139. Seckendorf was present; and his narrative is exceedingly 
interesting. 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



341 



compelled the citizens of Geneva not only to sign, but to 
swear to, on pain of banishment. 14 It mattered not with Cal- 
vin whether the people had professed the general doctrines 
of the Reformation, or whether they were still Catholics, or 
were of no religious profession, they must all take a public 
oath, in the great church of the capital, where he was 
minister, that they not only believed the twenty-one articles, 
but would live accordingly. When he found the number 
refusing submission to him too great to admit of banishment, 
he harassed them with public rebukes uttered in his ser- 
mons, and strove with his might to perplex them in all their 
affairs and relations to society. He even proceeded further. 
He would not suffer strangers, or citizens of other countries, 
to reside peaceably in Geneva, unless they would submit to 
this ecclesiastical dictation, and give in their adhesion, con- 
verted or unconverted, to his articles. He joined church 
and state in the administration of ecclesiastical discipline, 
for the purpose of giving it greater severity and strength ; 
and, having made himself the leading man in both, he pro- 
ceeded in his domination over the liberties of his followers to 
the most intolerable lengths. According to the registers of 
the city of Geneva, still existing, four hundred and fourteen 
persons, male and female, were punished in the two years, 
1558 and 1559, for the most trifling deviations from the 
letter of the faith. One person, indeed, by the name of Ber- 
thelier, was excommunicated for the sole crime of saying 
that he was as good a man as Calvin. And the reformer 
justified himself in these proceedings. In his tract against 
Westphal, he says : " If I am to be called abusive because I 
have held up the mirror to master Joachim, who is too much 
blinded by his vices, in order that he might at length begin 
to be ashamed of himself, he ought to address the same 
reproach to the prophets, the apostles, and even to Christ 



14 Dyer's Life of Calvin, p. 11. 



342 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHEISTIAXETT : 



himself, who have not scrupled to reproach with bitterness 
the adversaries of the true doctrine." 15 

Xot satisfied with compelling the citizens to swallow his 
creed, Calvin went so far as to give direction to their read- 
ing. Thus, in the Registers for the 13th of March, 1559, all 
persons are forbade the perusal of the Amadis de Gaul. 26 
X either their consciences, nor their understandings, were 
left free. Xot only laymen, but ministers, on coming to 
Geneva, must accord entirely with Calvin's articles of faith, 
or suffer j>unishment. There was Bolsec, formerly a monk, 
now a Protestant, and a preacher. But he did not believe 
in Calvin's doctrine of predestination. On visiting Geneva, 
at the request of some of the nobility, he preached a sermon 
in which he dissented in strong terms from this Calvinistic 
article. By Calvin's consent, and in his presence, the stranger 
was arrested, tried for heresy, indicted, and imprisoned. Cal- 
vin, it was believed, desired to have him put to death ; for, 
in a circular addressed by the reformer to the other leading 
churches of Switzerland, he says : " It is our wish that our 
church should be purged froni this pest in such a manner 
that it may not, by being driven thence, become injurious to 
our neighbors ;" 17 and it would be difficult for any man to 
tell how these two ends could both be met, without executing 
Bolsec. The supposition is sustained by the entire history 
of Calvin's administration of the Helvetic Church. He re- 

15 Quoted by P. Henry, i. p. 460, from the French translation of this 
tract, and by Dyer, p. 127. 

16 Dyer, p. 129 ; and if the reader will look at the authority here 
quoted, he will find any number of specimens of the remarkable severity 
of Calvin. " They who did not come to church were fined three sols. 
They who came after the sermon was begun were censured the first time 
and fined the second. They who swore by the body aud blood of Christ 
were condemned to kiss the earth, to stand an hour in the pillory, and to 
pay a fine of three sols. He who denied God, or his baptism, was im- 
prisoned nine days and whipped." See P. Henry, ii., p. 114, note. 

17 Dyer, p. 231. 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



343 



ceived members only on their subscription to his creed. He 
punished them for the slightest deviations from it. He spared 
not strangers coming to visit the city where he held supreme 
authority. And in one case, certainly, he did go to the ex- 
treme of burning a man at the stake for the simple crime of 
refusing assent to his theological ojDinions. I refer, of course, 
to the case of Michael Servetus, which any one might wish 
to pass in silence, were it not essential to show, that Calvin 
and the Helvetic Church never comprehended the true spirit, 
the beautiful ideal, of primitive Christianity. Servetus, a 
Spaniard by birth, and descended from a noble family, was 
a person of great natural genius ; and his education in let- 
ters, in law, and in medicine, at the first schools and under 
the most illustrious teachers of Europe, left nothing to be 
desired. So universal was his genius, that, before he had 
completed his twenty-second year, he published a religious 
work under the name of The Heresies of the Trinity, and 
afterward another called the Restoration of Christianity, in 
which he expressed opinions decidedly opposed to the ortho- 
doxy of the Reformers. The positions of his first production 
he subsequently retracted ; but, though nothing was alleged 
against his private character or conduct, he was, after many 
years, and by information furnished by Calvin, arrested by 
the officers of the Inquisition at Vienna, and tried for heresy. 
He had long resided there in the peaceable pursuit of the 
medical profession, living in the palace of the archbishop, 
and enjoying the confidence and esteem of the whole city. 
He had been, however, a confidential friend and correspond- 
ent of Cab in in his earlier days ; and he had offended him 
by certain letters addressed to him, as well as by certain 
manuscript notes appended to a copy of Calvin's Institutes, 
which he had forwarded to the Reformer at Geneva. Dread- 
ing the resentment and treachery of Calvin, and justly fear- 
ing for his safety in the hands of the Inquisition, he made his 
escape from the prison at Vienna and fled with all haste into 



344 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY : 

Italy. After spending a short time there, where his igno- 
rance of the language gave him no opportunity of gaining 
an honorable livelihood by the practice of his profession, he 
undertook to effect a passage into France, where he had 
resided as a student many years before. But to get into 
France, his nearest and best route was to go through Geneva. 
Here he rested for a short time, and was about leaviug for 
Zurich, when he was apprehended, at the instance of Calvin, 
and thrown into prison. The accusation, drawn up by Cal- 
vin, contained thirty-eight heads, the substance of them all, 
however, being the general charge of heresy and contumacy 
in the publication of his ojrinions. The eighth " item," as it 
is called in the accusation, reveals the authorship and animus 
of the whole proceeding : " That, in the person of M. Calvin, 
minister of God's word in this Church of Geneva, he has de- 
famed, in a printed book, the doctrine preached in it, utter- 
ing all the insults and blasphemies it is possible to invent." 
The " printed book " was Calvin's Institutes ; and the blas- 
phemies and insults were the notes of Servetus on the mar- 
gins. Calvin's secretary, by the name of Nicholas de la 
Fontaine, was the formal prosecutor; but Fontaine was a 
mere youth, yet a student studying with Calvin ; and the 
real prosecutor was Calvin himself. Calvin conducted the 
case before the court ; and his power in it was, as is well 
known, at that time supreme. Servetus at first thought it 
impossible for the authorities of Geneva to carry the affair 
to extremities against a stranger, a mere traveller passing 
through their city, for works published in another country, 
and composed so many years before, when he was but little 
better than a boy. But he soon learned Calvin and the spirit 
of the Helvetic Church more thoroughly. It was not long 
before he saw death but a few steps before him ; and, to 
avert such a doom, he drew up a paper demanding his re- 
lease on the following grounds : 1st, That it was a novel 
proceeding, unknown to the Apostles and the Ancient 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



345 



Church, to subject a man to a criminal prosecution for 
points of doctrine ; 2d, That he had committed no crime, 
or misdemeanor, in the territory of Geneva; and 3d, That, 
as he was a foreigner, unacquainted with the customs of the 
country and the practice of the courts of law, he requested 
to be allowed an advocate for the better management of his 
cause. Nothing could be more reasonable than this demand ; 
but the culprit had offended Calvin ; and Calvin had caught 
the impugner of his doctrines at Geneva, where his personal 
authority was irresistible. The release of the traveller was, 
therefore, denied ; he was also denied the benefit of counsel, 
on the ground, that he was such a heretic, showing that his 
case had been prejudged ; and the result was, of course, 
Servetus was condemned. The nature of the punishment 
was pointed out to the court by Calvin, who wrote an 
elaborate argument to show, that " heresy was made capital 
by the Roman emperors, and that the punishment of death 
is not contrary to the spirit of the New Testament." 18 The 
unhappy man, therefore, who, in heathen lands and in heathen 
times, could by law and custom have claimed the rights of 
hospitality as a stranger, was sent to the stake and burnt 
alive on a slow fire made of green wood : " About midday," 
says Dyer, " Servetus was led to the stake. Before it lay 
a large block of wood on which he was to sit. An iron 
chain encompassed his body and held him to the stake ; his 
neck was fastened to it by a strong cord, which encircled it 
several times. On his head was placed a crown of plaited 
straw and leaves, strewed with sulphur to assist in suffocat- 
ing him. At his girdle were suspended both his printed 
books, and the manuscript which he had sent to Calvin — 
the causes of his miserable end. Servetus begged the exe- 
cutioner to put him quickly out of his misery. But the fel- 
low, either from accident or design, had not been properly 



18 Dyer, p. 279. 
15* 



346 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY '. 



instructed in his duty, and had collected a heap of green 
wood. When the fire was kindled, Servetus uttered such a 
piercing shriek, that the crowd fell hack with a shudder. 
Some, more humane than the authorities, ran and threw in 
fagots : nevertheless, his sufferings lasted ahout half an hour. 
Just before he expired, he cried with a terrible voice : 
c Jesus, thou son of the eternal God, have mercy upon me !' " 
And now, reader, as you listen to that cry, and behold this 
fearful scene, oj)en your New Testament at any point of the 
Sermon on the Mount : " Blessed are the merciful, for they 
shall obtain mercy !" No words of mine are necessary to 
show you how utterly below the standard of the great doc- 
trine of universal love was the temper, under the personal 
administration of its chief minister, of the Helvetic Church ; 
and if any one, at any time, has a doubt as to how far the 
Calvinistic Reformation recovered the original ideal of 
Christianity, let him always examine his doubt by the light 
of that funeral pile, on which a man was burnt alive for the 
simple crime, not of an unconverted or unbelieving heart, 
nor of any looseness or impropriety of life, but of holding 
opinions on theological topics contrary to the twenty-one 
articles of the Calvinistic faith ! 19 

These two points, therefore — the necessity of a change of 

19 For a most impartial account of Calvin's administration at Geneva, 
in all the cases I have mentioned, see Dyer's Life of Calvin, pp. 249-305. 
The case of Servetus will be found at large in Dr. Mosheim's work, entitled 
" Geschichte des beruhmten Spanischen Artzes M. Serveto," which forms 
the second volume of his " Ketzer-Geschichte," 4to. Helmstadt, 1748. 
But the original documents in this celebrated trial have been published 
in almost all the European languages, and need no commentary of Mos- 
heim, or of any other author. The facts are too notorious to admit of 
contradiction ; and the mildness of my statement of them will show, that 
I introduce them here for no purpose hostile to the reputation of Calvin- 
ism, but merely to prove, that the primitive ideal of our religion was not 
restored, nor even dreamed of, by the founders of the Calvinistic branch 
of the Lutheran Reformation. 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



347 



heart in order to being regarded as a Christian — and the 
additional necessity of consenting to a creed in order to 
being received into church fellowship — were the fundamental 
positions of the Reformation. They were enforced by 
Luther, Melanchthon, Zuinglius, and Calvin, though Zuing- 
lius was opposed, theoretically, to the use of compulsion in 
matters not held important. In the propagation of the sub- 
stance of religion, however, he not only was for using force, 
but he actually fought for the advancement of his faith, and 
fell amidst the roar of battle. It has been seen that Calvin 
employed the most violent means for the same general pur- 
pose. Luther and Melanchthon limited their compulsory 
process to the necessity of signing their articles of confes- 
sion ; and it must consequently be remembered that, in 
respect to these two cardinal elements of the Reformation, 
there was some variety in the stress laid upon them by the 
original reformers. They all struggled, nevertheless, in their 
respective spheres of action, to build up a reformed and 
spiritual Christianity on the ruins of the Church of Rome ; 
and their two grand ideas were, that sjnritual life which is 
implied in the proposition of justification by faith, and an abso- 
lute unity of opinion in respect to a general system of theo- 
logy. At first, these two points were pressed with nearly 
equal zeal ; but, as soon as the era of Protestant controversy 
arose, under the debates between the German and the Swiss 
reformers, the doctrine of the necessity of a unity of opinion 
took the lead all over Europe. The necessity of the new 
birth was still held forth ; but the other dogma, as has been 
shown, was pushed. So heated did the minds of the great 
leaders become, in the progress of their debates, that they 
soon nearly dropped, and afterward misunderstood, their 
own proposition respecting justifying faith. They seemed 
to confound two words, as well as two ideas, which were not 
at all identical. Faith was taken for belief ; and Justification 
by Faith was proclaimed as a state of mind based on a recep- 



348 



[METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY '. 



tion of the truth. The truth, of course, in any case, was 
that form of doctrine, that system of "theology, which the 
teacher, whoever he might be, had himself embraced. The 
original reformers had scarcely gone to their graves, indeed, 
before the glorious doctrine of Justification by Faith signified 
simply, that a man was all right, in the eyes of the different 
church establishments, if he gave in his adhesion to the arti- 
cles of their creed. It was so over the whole of Germany. 
It was so in Switzerland. It was so in France. It was so 
in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It was so in our mother 
country, where, at the rise of Puritanism, the only question 
put to a Puritan heretic before burning him was, whether he 
would renounce his opinions and subscribe to the thirty-nine 
articles of the Church of England. It was so, a little after- 
ward, among the Puritans themselves, and in our own country, 
when they burnt and drowned the witches, and cut off the 
ears and whipped the naked bodies of the Quakers, and 
refused a landing to immigrant members of the English 
Church, and banished into a howling wilderness the upright 
and high-minded Roger Williams. The Puritans, however, 
must have their due. They certainly did, at their outset, 
remind the world of the more spiritual element of the 
Christian character. They insisted on that change of heart 
and life which the fathers of the Reformation included under 
the formula of Justification by Faith. They accused the 
people of Great Britain, and afterward of Germany, of 
having back-slidden from the fundamental axiom, from the 
very nature and design, of the great enterprise of Luther ; 
and, by pressing the Lutheran view of practical religion, 
they were the occasion of a decided revival of genuine 
Christianity. While in England, indeed, they based their 
movement entirely on the first of the two cardinal principles 
of the Reformation. They went so far as to make non- 
conformity to the opinions of an established creed the duty, 
and the inalienable right, of every individual. But they had, 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



349 



nevertheless, and in spite of all consistency, a creed of their 
own, which they imposed npon every person proposing to 
unite with them. They carried this creed to Holland ; and 
it w T as the rigorous discussion and application of it that 
characterized and weakened them in that land of their tem- 
porary wanderings. They brought the same creed with 
them to this country ; and here, under its various modifica- 
tions, they not only insisted upon every man's receiving it 
on becoming a member of their community, but they made 
it the law of the land, to w T hich every one must yield assent 
before he could become a citizen. They far outstripped their 
English persecutors, in fact, in the development and application 
of the necessity of Unity of Opinion. They contented not them- 
selves, as their English oppressors had done, w T ith consolidat- 
ing a connection between church and state ; but they made 
their church to be the state itself; and they cut off, by the 
most violent means, such of the native-born inhabitants as 
grew not up into their way of thinking, and thrust from them 
all of every clime, condition, and profession, whose justifica- 
tion, whose religious state, did not consist in subscribing to 
their theological opinions. And the result was the same as 
had been witnessed in the older countries. Religion w T as 
soon looked upon as nothing but a compliance with a certain 
formula of faith. It was transformed from a work of grace 
into an operation, or condition, of the mind. It was trans- 
ferred from the heart to the head ; or, to speak the truth 
more exactly, it had utterly expired ; and a system of 
dogmas was set up, here in our own country, as had before 
been done in every other land, to usurp and occupy its place. 20 

20 Dr. Cooke (Centuries, vol. i., pp. 198-199) says that the earliest record 
on the books of his parish of Lynn, Massachusetts, consists of the follow- 
ing note: "Voted, That, in case of admitting members into full commu- 
nion, although the church is far from discouraging a relation of Christian 
experience, but would gladly receive one, whenever offered, yet they 
would not insist upon it ; but, instead of this, that they who desire admis- 



350 



METHODISE THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY '. 



Such, reader, was the religious condition of the world 
when John \Yesley appeared upon the stage. The primary 
doctrine of the Reformation had become identical with the 
second ; and the resulting idea, that religion could not exist 
without a consent to a certain mode of stating it, had nearly 
banished all genuine religion from the experience and know- 
ledge of mankind. The departure of religion had been fol- 
lowed by an influx of every species of immorality, as the 
dampness and darkness of night follow at once upon the foot- 
steps of retiring day. All practical jnety was discouraged, 
ridiculed, not only by men of the world, but by the people 
and pastors of the churches. In Germany, rationalism had 
taken the place of revelation, and the population had fallen 
back into every kind and variety of vice. In the other con- 
tinental nations, which still looked to the common father- 
land as also the common exemplar of everything moral and 
intellectual, an inferior degree of intelligence had prepared 
the half-reformed inhabitants for a still deeper fall. In Eng- 
land, the population had so lost sight of the fundamental 
principles of Christianity, and had sunk so low iu their 
appreciation of its value, that a clergyman in the houses of 
the nobility and gentry was classed among the domestics, 
and his profession was generally despised. The church was 
considered, by the higher classes, as a part of the govern- 
ment of the country, a useful means of keeping the rabble in 
subjection, and a prop to support the royal power, but a 
farce so far as its ostensible object and occupation were con- 

sion into the church should be received upon their consenting to a con fesaioji 
of faith, which the church have approved and fixed upon." And the 
author admits that their vote was according to the general practice of 
New England Puritanism prior to the advent of Methodism, while every 
informed reader knows that it was because the great Jonathan Edwards 
had received and undertaken to apply, in his church at Northampton, 
the practice and principle of the Wesleys, that, powerful as was his influ- 
ence, he was rejected and dismissed by the members of his parish. 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



351 



cerned. Historians- give us frightful pictures of the condition 
of religion in Great Britain just prior to the birth of "Wesley. 
"Revolutions," says Souther, " call forth heroic virtue at 
the beginning, but their progress tends to destroy all virtue, 
for they dislocate the foundations of morality. Reformed 
religion had not yet taken root in the hearts of the people ; 
the lower classes were, for the most part, as ignorant of the 
essentials of religion as they had been in the days of Popery, 
and they had none of their attachment to its forms, in which 
the strength of Popery consists. Opinions were now peril- 
ously shaken and unsettled. During the anarchy that 
ensued, new sects sprung up like weeds in a neglected gar- 
den. Many were driven mad by fanaticism, a disease which 
always rages in disordered times. Others were shocked at 
beholding how religion was made a cloak for ambition and 
villainy of every kind ; and, being deprived of their old teach- 
ers, and properly disgusted with the new, they fell into a 
state of doubt, and from doubt into unbelief. A generation 
grew up under a system which had, as far as possible, de- 
prived holiness of all its beauty ; the yoke was too heavy, 
too galling, too ignominious to be borne : and when the 
Restoration put an end to the dominion of knaves and fana- 
tics, it was soon perceived that the effect of such systems is 
to render religion odious, by making piety suspected, and to 
prepare a people for licentiousness and atheism." 21 It was 
this licentious and atheistic generation which occupied the 
mother country when the father of John Wesley commenced 
his ministry at Epworth. It was an age of general corrup- 
tion. Lamented by the few pious divines of the kingdom, 
such as Burnet, Watts and Seeker, the religious state of 
Britain was ridiculed, and at the same time illustrated, by 
her satirists and comic poets. A living writer has mentioned 
the fact, that the people could then read the loosest pages of 



21 "Life of Wesley," vol. i. pp. 2*71, 272. 



352 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 

such writers as Congreve and Dry den without a blush ; but 
those very authors, so obscene and atheistical themselves, 
abound with the most caustic passages on the immorality 
and irreligion of their times ; and the reader is called upon 
to imagine, what I cannot here describe, the utter impiety 
and profligacy of a period which could fall under the ban of 
such degenerate pens. It is enough to say, that, when Wes- 
ley was in his cradle, the Reformation in Great Britain had 
lost sight of all personal and practical religion, and that this 
result was the consequence of its having substituted, as had 
been done before in other Protestant countries, conformity 
to articles of belief for the regeneration of the heart and a 
life of faith. 22 

Mr. Wesley saw and lamented this wretched and ominous 
condition of the Reformation all over Europe. He saw that, 
while it had damaged the power of Popery, it had not re- 
covered the original character, the primitive ideal, of Christ- 
ianity. He perceived, too, that if its success had been as 
perfect as possible, it would have left original Christianity 
unrestored. The Reformation, and the Christianity of Jesus 
and his apostles, had not the same ideal. Christ, and his 
immediate representatives, as has been shown, were satisfied 

22 The religious state of England, at the rise of Methodism, has been 
well drawn by Dr. Stevens (History of Methodism, vol. i. pp. 19-32), 
and by Dr. Southey (Life of Wesley, vol. i. pp. 261-283). The history 
of the decline and fall of the English Reformation, however, can be found 
only in those larger works, which give themselves the needed scope and 
space for a faithful and comprehensive statement. If the reader wishes 
to know exactly the state of religion in Great Britain for a century prior 
to Wesley, let him read the History of Religion as contained in vol. iii. 
of the Pictorial History of England, or the lengthy but exceedingly 
able chapter 5th of Ma3son's recent Life and Times of Milton (vol. i. 
p^). 244-325), the most admirable exposition of the subject in the language. 
Macaulay treats the same topic, but his pictures are not entirely to be 
trusted. I could refer to more recondite sources, but they would bo of 
no avail to the general reader. 



THE FIEST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



353 



when the principle of love took practical and exclusive pos- 
session of the heart. The Reformation was ?iot satisfied with 
this, but added to it an intellectual submission to certain 
articles of belief ; and, in this way, it had brought contention, 
animosity, division, imbecility, immorality and ruin upon 
itself. John Wesley now rose up and proclaimed the origi- 
nal Gospel — the Gospel that makes the substance and test of 
our religion to consist in that new life of the spirit, whose 
other name is perfect or universal love — and dropped alto- 
gether the addition so unfortunately borrowed by the Refor- 
mation from the Church of Rome. What he looked upon 
as the beginning of religion, he sometimes called the new 
birth, sometimes justification by faith, sometimes conversion, 
but the maturity of the work, according to everything he 
said, is a full and controlling love to God and man ; and, 
whenever a person possessing this love, and giving satisfac- 
tory evidence of its possession, presented himself as a candi- 
date for membership into his societies, no question whatever 
was put to him by Mr. Wesley in relation to his theological 
opinions. He taught this generous and genuine catholicity 
to his followers. In the very first of his published discourses, 
preached before the University of Oxford at the opening of 
his career, he describes the nature of true religion as being 
that spiritual salvation which a man obtains by accepting 
Christ : " This, then," he says, " is the salvation which is 
through faith, even in the present world : a salvation from 
sin, and the consequences of sin, both often expressed in the 
word justification / which, taken in the largest sense, implies 
a deliverance from guilt and punishment, by the atonement 
of Christ actually applied to the soul of the sinner^Now be- 
lieving oisr him, and a deliverance from the whole body of 
sin through Christ formed in the heart. So that he who is 
thus justified, or saved by faith, is indeed bom again. He 
is born again of the Spirit unto a new life, ' which is hid with 
Christ in God.' 4 He is a new creature : old things are 



354 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY I 



passed away ; all things irr him are become new.' And as a 
new-born babe he gladly receives the adoXov, 4 sincere milk of 
the word, and grows thereby :' going on in the might of the 
Lord his God, from faith to faith, from grace to grace, until, 
at length, he comes unto a perfect man, unto the measure of 
the stature of the fullness of Christ.' " 23 

Mr. Wesley takes pains, in several of his discourses, to 
distinguish this work of God upon the heart from all systems 
of belief. He has a sermon on scriptural Christianity, in 
which he explicitly denies that it consists in " a set of opin- 
ions, a system of doctrines," maintaining it to be a work 
manifest in " men's hearts and lives." He represents it as 
the result of the operation of the Holy Spirit on the heart, 
producing " love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, good- 
ness ;" producing also faith and hope ; and enabling the 
recipient " to crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts, 
its passions and desires, and, in consequence of this inward 
change, to fulfill all outward righteousness, ' to walk as Christ 
also walked ' — in the 4 work of faith, the patience of hope, the 
labor of love.' " " Such," says he, " was Christianity in its 
rise. Such was a Christian in ancient days." He then wishes 
to be told where, in all the world, this original Christianity 
can be found. "Where," says he, "does this Christianity 
now exist ? Where, I pray, do the Christians live ? Which 
is the country, the inhabitants whereof are all thus filled 
with the Holy Ghost ? Are all of one heart and one soul ? 
Cannot suffer one among them to lack anything, but continu- 
ally give to every man as he hath need ? Who, one and all, 
have the love of God filling their hearts and constraining 
them to love their neighbor as themselves f Who have 
all ' put on bowels of mercy, humbleness of mind, gentleness, 
long-suffering ?' Who offend not in any kind, either by word 
or deed, against justice, mercy, or truth, but in every point 

a3 " Wesley's Works," vol. v. pp. 12, 13. 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



355 



do unto all men, as they would these should do unto them ? 
With what propriety can we term any a Christian country, 
which does not answer this description ? Why, then, let us 
confess we have never yet seen a Christian country upon 
earth." This discourse, like the one just mentioned, was 
preached at Oxford ; and let the reader listen to the noble 
expostulation it contains to the leading characters of the 
place : " Let me ask of you then," says the author, " in ten- 
der love, and in the spirit of meekness, is this city a Christ- 
ian city ? Is Christianity, Scriptural Christianity, found 
here ? Are we, considered as a community of men, so 4 filled 
with the Holy Ghost ' as to enjoy in our hearts, and show 
forth in our lives, the genuine fruits of that Spirit ? Are 
ah the magistrates, all heads and governors of colleges 
and halls, and their respective societies (not to speak of the 
inhabitants of the town) of one heart and one soul? ' Is the 
love of God shed abroad in our hearts ?' Are our tem- 
pers the same that were in him ? And are our lives agree- 
able thereto ? Are we 4 holy as he who hath called us is 
holy, in all manner of conversation ?' I intreat you to ob- 
serve," he adds with emphasis, " that here are no peculiar 
notions now under consideration ; that the question moved 
is not concerning doubtful opinions, of one kind or another ; 
but concerning the undoubted, fundamental branches (if 
there be any such) of our common Christianity.'''' He por- 
trays, in manly terms, the fall which Christianity had made 
even at the great centres of it in Great Britain. He 
addresses the fellows and students of the colleges, founded 
for the establishment and spread of true religion, as a gene- 
ration of triflers — " triflers with God, with one another," he 
says, " and with your own souls* For, how few of you 
spend, from one week to another, a single hour in private 
prayer ? How few have any thought of God in the general 
tenor of your conversation ! Who of you is, in any degree, 
acquainted with the work of his Spirit, his supernatural 



356 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY '. 

work in the souls of men ? Can you bear, unless now and 
then in a church, any talk of the Holy Spirit ? Would you 
not take it for granted, if one began such a conversation, 
that it was either hypocrisy or enthusiasm ? In the name 
of the Lord God Almighty, I ask, what religion are you of? 
Even the talk of Christianity, ye cannot, will not, hear !" 
He finally calls the attention of his hearers to the grand 
object of his life, the restoration of primitive Christianity, 
the religion of the heart and life, whose watch-word is love : 
" What probability, what possibility rather (speaking after 
the manner of men), is there that Christianity, scriptural 
Christianity, should be again the religion of this place? 
That all orders of men among us should speak and live as 
men ' filled with the Holy Spirit ?' By whom should this 
Christianity be restored ? By those of you that are in 
authority ? Are you convinced, then, that this is Scriptural 
Christianity ? Are you desirous it should be restored ? And 
do you not count your fortune, liberty, life, dear unto your- 
selves, so ye may be instrumental in restoring it ? But, sup- 
pose ye have this desire, who hath any power proportioned 
to the effect ? Perhaps some of you have made a few faint 
' attempts, but with how small success ! Shall Christianity, 
then, be restored by young, unknown, inexperienced men ? 
I know not whether ye yourselves could suffer it." These 
young men, of course, were himself and his associates ; he 
thus modestly tells the world, at the beginning of his career, 
what he undertook to do ; and he states distinctly that the 
Christianity, the Scriptural Christianity, which he proposed 
to restore, was that inward work of God upon the heart 
recognized as the new birth, regeneration, a new creature, 
whose starting point and termination is universal love. 

The possession of this religion of the heart he makes the 
criterion of a man's being a Christian ; he makes it the test, 



Wesley's Works, vol. v. pp. 33-45. 



THE FLBST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



357 



and the only test, of church, membership; for he openly 
renounces the common practice of allowing " opinions, or a 
system of doctrines," to constitute either the proof of indi- 
vidual piety, or the reason of receiving persons into church 
fellowship. The first point of the Lutheran Reformation, 
therefore, he cordially embraced ; but the second point, which 
the German and Swiss reformers, and all their imitators over 
Europe, had borrowed from the Church of Rome, he utterly 
excluded. He taught everywhere, from the beginning to the 
end of his career, that the same work which made a man a 
Christian should constitute his sole qualification to be a mem- 
ber of the Church of God on earth ; and the evidence of this 
work, to those whose duty it should be to extend to him the 
right hand and to receive him into the household of faith, was 
not his creed, not his views of theological theses, but his life 
and conduct. " JBy their fruits ye shall know them." These 
were the two points of the Wesleyan Reformation: That 
true religion is the work of God upon the heart, consisting 
of love to God and man, and evidenced by faith, hope, and 
a useful life ; and secondly, That the person possessing and 
evidencing this inward work was to be received into the 
fellowship of the Church of Christ on earth without respect 
to his private opinions of any kind whatever, whether theolo- 
gical, speculative, or scientific. 

This was Methodism in the hands of the first Methodist ; 
this is Methodism at the present moment over all the world ; 
and there is no point, in fact, on which Wesley and his fol- 
lowers have been uniformly more emphatic, than the rejec- 
tion and condemnation of the old Roman idea, so sadly exem- 
plified by the example of the reformers of the sixteenth 
century, of making a man's opinions take the place of his 
religion. It has been seen what Wesley said, at the open- 
ing of his ministry, in relation to what constitutes a Christ- 
ian character. Let us now hear him say, near the termination 
of his days, whether the life thus described is not the only 



358 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHEISTIANITT '. 

qualification to "be demanded of a candidate proposing to 
become a member of the Christian body. In his sermon on 
a Catholic Spirit, preached in the maturity of his work, he 
points out distinctly what questions he had to propound to a 
person before giving the right hand of fellowship ; and the 
position he there takes is a noble one — a position which should 
cover his name with eternal honor in a world so divided, so 
cursed, by ecclesiastical disputations. " The first thing," he 
says, " is this : Is thy heart right with God ? Dost thou 
believe his being, and his perfections ? His eternity, immen- 
sity, wisdom, power ; his justice, mercy, and. truth ? Dost 
thou believe that he now ' upholdeth all things by the word 
of his power ?' And that he governs even the most minute, 
even the most noxious, to his own glory, and the good of 
them that love him ? Hast thou a divine evidence, a super- 
natural conviction, of the things of God ? Dost thou ' walk 
by faith and not by sight ' — ' looking not at temporal things, 
but things eternal?' Dost thou believe in the Lord Jesus 
Christ, ' God over all, blessed forever ?' Is he revealed in 
thy soul? Dost thou 'know Jesus Christ and him crucified ?' 
Does he ' dwell in thee and thou in him V Is he ' formed in 
thy heart by faith ?' Having absolutely disclaimed all thy 
own works, thy own righteousness, hast thou ' submitted thy- 
self unto the righteousness of God, which is by faith in Christ 
Jesus ?' Art thou ' found in him, not having thy own righte- 
ousness, but the righteousness which is by faith ?' And art 
thou, through him, ' fighting the good fight of faith, and lay- 
ing hold of eternal life ?' Is thy faith (evepyovfievrj di' aya7T7]g) 
' filled with the energy of love ?' Dost thou love God? I 
do not say, above all things ; for it is both an imscriptural 
and an ambiguous expression : but ' with all thy heart and 
with all thy strength ?' Dost thou seek all thy happiness 
in hhn alone ? And dost thou find what thou seekest ? Does 
thy soul continually ' magnify the Lord and thy spirit rejoice 
in God thy Saviour ?' Having learned ' in everything to give 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



359 



thanks,' dost thou find it is a joyful and a pleasant thing to be 
thankful ? Is God the center of thy soul — the sum of all thy 
desires ? Art thou accordingly laying up thy treasure in 
heaven, and 4 counting all things else dung and dross ?' Hath 
the love of God cast the love of the world out of thy soul ? 
Then thou art 4 crucified to the world? Thou ' art dead to 
all beloiv, and thy life is hid with Christ in God? Art thou 
employed in doing, ' not thy own will, but the will of him 
that sent thee V Of him that sent thee down to sojourn here 
awhile, to spend a few days in a strange land, till, having 
finished the work he hath given thee to do, thou return to 
thy father's house ? Is it thy meat and drink ' to do the will 
of thy Father which is in heaven ?' Is ' thine eye single ' in 
all things ? Always fixed on him ? Always 4 looking unto 
Jesus P Dost thou point at him in whatsoever thou dost — 
in all thy labor, thy business, thy conversation ? Aiming only 
at the glory of God in all : ' Whatsoever thou dost, either in 
word or deed, doing it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, 
giving thanks unto God, even the Father, through him ?' 
Does the love of God constrain thee ' to serve him with fear,' 
to ' rejoice unto him with reverence ?' Art thou more afraid 
of displeasing God than either of death or hell f Is nothing 
so terrible to thee as the thought of offending the eyes of his 
glory? Upon this ground, dost thou 4 hate all evil ways ' — 
every transgression of his holy and perfect law — and herein 
'exercye thyself to have a conscience void of offence toward 
God /.id toward man ?' Is thy heart right toward thy 
neigl' jor ? Dost thou 4 love as thyself^ all mankind without 
exception ? 4 If you love those only that love you, what 
thank have you ?' Do you 4 love your enemies ?' Is your 
soul full of good-will, of tender affection, to ward them ? Do 
you love even the enemies of God — the unthankful and 
unholy ? Do your bowels yearn over them ? Could you 
4 wish yourself (temporally) accursed for their sake ? And 
do you show this by 4 blessing them that curse you, and 



360 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY '. 

praying for those that despitefully use you and persecute 
you ?' Do you show your loye by your wokks ? While 
you haYe time, as you haYe opportunity, do you in fact ' do 
good to all menf neighbors or strangers, friends or enemies, 
good or bad ? Do you do them all the good you can — 
endeavoring to supply all their wants, assisting them in body 
and soul, to the uttermost in your power ? If thou art thus 
minded, may every Christian say — yea, if thou art but sin- 
cerely desirous of it, and following on till thou attain — then 
c thy heart is right, as my heart is with thy heart.' And 1 if 
it be, give me thy haxd.' " Such was Wesley's idea of 
practical Christianity: but listen a moment longer: "I do 
not mean, ' be of my opinion.'' You need not. I do not 
expect or desire it. Xeither do I mean, ' I will be of your 
opinion.'' I cannot. It does not depend on my choice : I 
can no more think, than I can see or hear, as I will. Keep 
you your opinion : I mine : and that as steadily as ever. 
You need not endeavor to come over to to me, or bring me 
over to you. I do not desire you to dispute those points, or 
to hear or speak one word concerning them. Let all opinions 
alone on one side and the other. Only, ' give me thixe 
haxd !" 25 

That, reader, was Mr. Wesley's position on the two fun- 
damental points of the Lutheran Reformation. That was his 
position as a restorer of original Christianity. If you have 
ever imagined that Wesleyanism, by thus throwing away 
opinions, beliefs, creeds, lowers or relaxes the claims of God 
upon us, look again at this lengthy catalogue of the most 
personal and heart-searching questions. Can any man answer 
the half of these affirmatively and not be a Christian ? But 
if a Christian, in deed and in truth, why not, without trou- 
bling him about doubtful disputations, receive him at once 
into the family and fellowship of his own kindred ? This, at 



15 Wesley's Works, vol. v., pp. 414, 415. 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



361 



all events, was the stand-point of Methodism while yet in 
the hands, and under the supervision of its founder. He not 
only taught thus in his public ministrations, but so put him- 
self to record in his private Journal. He was one day 
travelling without company in his carriage, and there, after 
serious reflection, he wrote the following statement, which 
will be found in his diary for December 1st, 1767 : "Being 
alone in the coach, I was considering several points of im- 
portance, and thus much appeared clear as the day : 

" That a man may be saved who cannot express himself 
properly concerning imputed righteousness ; therefore, to do 
this is not necessary to salvation. 

" That a man may be saved who has not clear conceptions 
of it, yea, that never heard the phrase ; therefore, clear con- 
ceptions of it are not necessary to salvation ; yea, it is not 
necessary to use the phrase at all. 

" That a pious Churchman, who has not clear conceptions 
even of justification by faith may be saved ; therefore, clear 
conceptions even of this are not necessary to salvation ; 

" That a mystic, who denies justification by faith (Mr. 
Law for instance), may be saved. But if so, what becomes 
of ' Articulus -stantis vel cadentis Ecclesise ?' If so, is it not 
high time for us — ■ 

Projicere ampullas et sesquipedalia verba, 

and to return to the plain word : ' He that feaeeth God 
and woeketh eighteousness is accepted ivith him /" 

This, let it be remembered, was in 1767 ; and the natural 
results of this sort of reasoning could not fail to be such as 
have been witnessed in the quotations from Mr. Wesley's 
latest sermons. If a man could be a Christian, and not com- 
prehend — nay, even deny the fundamental article of the 
Reformation, the doctrine of justification by Faith, why 

23 See Wesley's Journal for Dec. 1, 1767- 
16 



362 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY ', 

might he not be a Christian, and therefore be admissible into 
the Church of Christ, who should not understand, or who 
should deny, every other part of the explanation of the work 
of God found in the confessions of the various denomina- 
tions ? As the founder of a new religious denomination, 
why should not Mr. Wesley say to those offering to join 
him, as Peter said in relation to Cornelius and his house- 
hold : " Can any man forbid water, that these should not be 
baptized " — that is, admitted into the Church of Christ — 
" which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we ?" 
Why should he not follow the example of the ^apostles, and 
the instructions of his Lord and Master, who, for the very 
purpose of preventing his representees from holding out 
theories of his work for the work itself, relates one of the 
profoundest but most beautiful of his parables : " So is the 
kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the 
ground, and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the 
seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how — (for 
the earth bringeth forth fruits of herself, first the blade, then 
the ear, after that the full corn in the ear) — but when the 
fruit is brought forth, he immediately putteth in the sickle, 
because the harvest is come." Why should he not say : " I 
sow in your hearts the seed ; the seed produces its results, 
I know not how; and you need not know how ; but, the 
harvest having come, I thrust my sickle among you, and 
garner yon up among the people of the Lord." Why should 
he not, on this foundation, say to every person : " If you 
know that you love God and man, if you manifest your love 
by your faith— if you show your faith by your works — give 
me your hand ?" If one erroneous opinion, or one set of 
erroneous opinions, is not inconsistent with a person's loving 
God and man according to the Gospel, and so being a genu- 
ine Christian, why may not another set, or even all the sets 
together, exist within a man's brain, without excluding 
from his heart the work and character of a Christian ? Is it, 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



363 



in other words, impossible for a Catholic, for an Arian, for 
an Antinomian, for a Universalist, to love God and his fellow- 
men deeply and sincerely, and to live the life of a true Christ- 
ian, in spite of his erroneous opinions ? If not impossible, 
has any one the right to forbid the entrance of such true 
Christians, whatever errors of the head they may entertain, 
from a membership with other Christians ? The most ortho- 
dox opinions, the clearest ideas of the human mind, must be 
exceedingly faulty, immature, foolish — like the prattlings of 
a child or the hallucinations of an idiot — in the sight of God. 
There cannot be as much difference between the heterodoxy 
and orthodoxy of men, as between the highest orthodoxy 
and the absolute and eternal truth. Every human creed, 
therefore (and all creeds are human), must be more or less 
imperfect — must be, indeed, as a whole untrue ; and no one 
has the right, certainly, to exclude another from the Church 
for not subscribing his name to an imperfect and false sys- 
tem of opinions. The thing is as unreasonable as it has been 
seen to be unscriptural ; and Mr. Wesley could not, in con- 
science, according to his own statement, refuse Christian fel- 
lowship to those, who enjoyed the love of God, but whose 
opinions of theological questions happened to be different 
from his own: " I dare not presume," says he, " to impose 
my mode of worship on any other. I believe it is trxdy 
primitive and apostolical. But my belief is 2<ro rule for 
axother." " Glorious declaration ! the fundamental propo- 
sition of the Wesleyan movement — the founder asks only if 
a man's heart is right with his Creator and his fellow-man 
— he then leaves this rectified heart to bring the whole 
man, soul and body, into ultimate and perfect harmony with 
the ideas and purposes of Christianity, and with the will @f 
God! 

But it is asked at once whether the founder of Methodism 
27 Wesley's Works, vol. v. p. 414, Harper's ed. 



364 



METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY : 



had no articles of faith. He had ; they were in substance the 
thirty-nine articles of the Church of England ; these he 
preached, recommended, and supported with all the ability 
he possessed ; he incorporated them, in an abbreviated form, 
into the branch of his denomination planted under his over- 
sight in the United States ; but he never made them the test 
of church membership. This is the difference between him 
and the Lutheran reformers. They, in respect to Rome, 
proclaimed loudly their right of private judgment, but were 
as imperious as the papacy itself over their own followers. 
Mr. Wesley, also, maintained this right of private judgment ; 
but what he claimed for himself, in respect to the Church of 
England, he freely granted to those who united with him : 
" There is only one condition," he says in the constitution 
given by him to Methodism, " previously required of those 
who desire admission into these societies — ' a desire to flee 
from the wrath to come and to be saved from their sins.' 
But wherever this is really fixed in the soul, it will be shown 
by its fruits. It is therefore expected of all who continue 
therein, that they should continue to evidence their desire 
of salvation, First : By doing no harm, by avoiding evil of 
every kind, especially that which is most generally prac- 
tised ; Secondly, By doing good, by being in every kind 
merciful after their power, and their opportunity, doing good 
of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to all men." 
This is the condition of church membership, and the only 
condition, known to Methodism. Whoever stands at her 
door and knocks, by giving the watch-word of universal 
love, and showing the tokens that he is truly a child of God, 
whatever be his opinions, is admitted into her fellowship and 
communion. But is Methodism entirely careless as to what 
her members may believe ? Certainly not ; on the contrary, 
she is very careful to send each one of them to the word of 
God for instruction ; she takes infinite pains, by preaching, 
by teaching, by every means, to inculcate such views on all 



THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



365 



important topics in the Christian system as she has herself 
adopted from revelation ; but she goes no further. She 
forces no one's conscience ; she overrides no one's convic- 
tions ; she lords it over no one's private judgment. Her 
members are as free to think for themselves as they were 
before entering, her in closure. She has succeeded, it is true, 
in bringing about a wonderful uniformity of belief among 
her adherents, a uniformity without a parallel in ecclesiastical 
history, but her success is the success of moral suasion, her 
victories are the triumph of religious liberty. Her banner is 
now high advanced over millions of the human family; and it 
floats over the largest empires, and over many of the 
islands of the seas ; but it bears upon its folds no such motto 
as that of Rome — " Believe as I do or die the death of the 
heretic," no such inscription as that of Calvin — " Think Avith 
me or burn" — no such narrow language as would have been 
put there by the least bigoted of the national establishments 
of Europe — nor any words to have been suggested by the 
spirit of the old Puritanism of New England. No, no ! On 
one side you read : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." On the other, 
the glorious sentiment : u my eelief is no eule for 
another!" This flag, indeed, for the first time raised and 
maintained since the days of the apostles, holds up before us 
the true ideal of original Christianity, of vital piety united 
with intellectual liberty — and this is Methodism ! 

And now, reader, is there anything — could there be any- 
thing — in this world of bigotry and oppression, more grate- 
ful to the general population of every nation, than such a 
system ? Do you not clearly see how welcome it must have 
been, from the beginning, to all persons religiously inclined, 
as fast as they were made to understand it? Even wicked 
and abandoned men, the very lowest and roughest classes, 
who could behold no beauty in its moral character, or in its 
religious purpose, would not fail to respect it for holding 



366 METHODISM THE IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY .* 

forth the fundamental idea of religious and of civil liberty. 
There could scarcely be a person so wanting in intelligence, 
or so illiterate, as not to be capable -of comparing a denomi- 
nation, demanding only piety of its members, with all other 
denominations, which, either in addition to piety, or to the 
exclusion of it, demanded to take the management and direc- 
tion of the opinions, of the understanding, of the private 
judgment, of their subjects. Men of reflection, of large 
reading and experience, and of candor equal to their know- 
ledge, must have rejoiced, and must now rejoice, in the 
advent and progress of a new Reformation, whose basis is 
identical with that of unadulterated Christianity, and whose 
general success could not fail to be the liberation of the 
human mind — not from oppressive laws, indeed, as this boon 
has been provided for by the English and American revolu- 
tions, but from the more rigid tyranny of creeds, articles, 
and confessions. The character of Methodism, it is true, was 
not at first generally understood by the world's population ; 
it was, indeed, very widely misunderstood, misrepresented, 
and accordingly rejected ; but as the system was but the 
body whose soul was an eternal principle, as indestructible 
as its Author — and that principle the ideal of original 
Christianity, against which nothing can prevail — it survived 
opposition, it made continual advances, it became in time the 
most powerful religious movement of modern history ; and I 
now submit it to the judgment of my most thoughtful and 
liberal reader, whether a work so clearly manifesting itself 
to be but the restoration of our primitive religion, a recovery 
of the real Gospel of the Son of God so long lost beneath the 
rubbish of human dogmas, is not worthy of his personal ex- 
amination and encouragement, and does not deserve even a 
greater success than has thus far been given it. At all events, 
the ]3ast is secure ; and its friends must look to the future with 
the same confidence in the immortality of truth which has 
cheered them forward from the beginning of their movement. 



CHAPTER VII. 



METHODISM IX RELATION TO THE REPRODUCTION, PRESERVA- 
TION, AND PROPAGATION OF THE IDEAL CHRISTIANITY: THE 
SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 

It must have been observed by careful readers of the New 
Testament, that, at some times, the great Founder of our 
religion was free to answer questions put to him by the Jews, 
and that, at other times, he utterly declined replying to their 
interrogations ; and a superficial student of the Scriptures 
might, on this ground, accuse him of moodiness of temper ; 
but a more thorough style of study resolves the contradiction 
in a way to heighten our admiration of the character of Jesus. 
He came here, according to the predictions of the prophets, 
and according to his own declarations, to accomplish a work 
given him of God the Father. He came here for the accom- 
plishment of this one solitary object. We are told by the 
loving evangelist, that " God so loved the world that he 
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life." Jesus, there- 
fore, sent here by that Being whose nature and whose name 
are Love, and being himself the glorious incarnation of that 
love, came into this angry and discordant world, this world 
of hatred toward God and man, to restore this lost affection 
to the race, and make it, according to the original design, the 
tie of universal brotherhood between man and man, and the 
tie that should bind again the universe to God. This, with- 
out going into theoretical analyses and explanations, which 
would involve intricate discussions, was his one only work. 
It was a mission of reconciliation between parties estranged 

867 



368 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 

from each other, bat who ought to live on terms of the great- 
est intimacy, confidence and harmony. Under the old dis- 
pensation, in every way so typical of that which was to follow, 
the people of Israel were commanded to make a special 
offering of " one lamb," which was to have a universal 
character, covering the ground occupied by all the offerings 
known to the prophetic services of the temple. It was to be 
" for a meat-offering, and for a burnt-offering, and for peace 
offerings," the object of which was " to make reconciliation 
for the House of Israel ;" it was a single offering, in other 
words, for the entire Jewish people, that they might thus 
manifest their remembrance of the Lord their God ; and it was 
the offering, too, which contained in it. the idea of a future 
sacrifice to be made for the whole human family. It repre- 
sented Jesus, the " Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
world," who, by his death, made the reconciliation of man- 
kind to God possible, and organized the original society of 
persons reconciled by love to their Creator and to their 
fellow-creatures. According to his own statement, he came 
to make atonement for the world ; and this atonement, or 
at-one-ment, is the universal reconciliation before mentioned. 
This was the work of God in the person of his Son. This 
was the milj work which Jesus undertook to do, and, there- 
fore, when questioned by the Jews, in a sincere spirit of 
inquiry, in relation to the nature of his enterprise, he 
always replied to their interrogations gladly ; but if pur- 
sued by speculative questions, such as were frequently urged 
upon him by the doctors and lawyers among the Jews, he 
demonstrated by his silence, or by turning to some practical 
view of his undertaking, that he had come, not to divide men 
still further by doubtful disputations, but to regenerate their 
nearts and fill them with the love of God. 

That this work of universal reconciliation, agreement, 
pacification, between mankind as among themselves, and 
between them and their common Father, was the sole end 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



369 



and aim of the mission of Jesus Christ, is evident from every 
view that can be taken of the subject. It is evident from what 
has been shown to be the substance of Christianity as applied 
to the human heart. It is evident from the tenor of the 
Scriptures, old and new, as has been demonstrated by the 
writings of St. Paul, the profoundest commentator which 
those Scriptures have ever had : " For if," says he, " when 
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death 
of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved 
by his life ; and not only so, but we also joy in God through 
our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received 
the atonement." Reconciliation and atonement, it is seen, are 
with him identical ; indeed, in the original language, they are 
the same word ; and, in our own language, the words have 
ever been used, by the best writers, interchangeably. In the 
Greek, the term KaraXkayr] signifies the state of agreement 
brought about by two parties in the making of a covenant, or 
contract ; and this is the term employed by the Apostle in this 
passage, and throughout the whole of his epistles, to convey 
the idea of reconciliation and atonement. So Chaucer, in his 
Gierke's Tale, gives the elements of the common term : 

" If gentilmen, or other of that contree, 
Were wroth, she wolde bring hem at one." 1 

In the same way, in an old commentary on this very pas- 
sage of the Apostle, it is said by Uclal : " And like as he made 
the Jews and the Gentiles at one between themselves, even 
so he made them both at one with God, that there should be 
nothing to breake the at-one-ment, but that the thinges in 
heaven and the thinges in earth shoulde be joyned together 
as it were into one body " — as if that orthodox old English 
commentator had intended, at one stroke, to settle the mean- 
ing of the word representing the work undertaken by Jesus. 



1 Gierke's Tale, y. 8313. 
JO* 



370 METHODISM EST RELATION TO CHRISTEANTTY I 



and to state the beginning and the end of that work itself. 
Though it was admitted by the Nazarene, that his religion 
would, in individual cases, cause divisions between those who 
received and those who rejected him, he clearly announces 
the aim and end of it to be " peace on earth and good will 
toward men." His object was to restore the harmonizing 
principle to the universe, to remove all discord from it, to 
make every man a brother to every other man, and to unite 
all men in filial reverence to God, by filling the wide compass 
of creation with the pervading element of universal love. 
This was his only purpose ; his theater of action was the 
human heart ; he could spend no time on extraneous ques- 
tions ; he knew that the restoration of the heart by love 
would carry the whole man, and finally the whole world, 
with it ; and to this end he devoted every hour, and every 
energy, of his wonderful life on earth. a 

2 The historians of our language have collected many similar proofs of 
the radical meaning of this word. Richardson (New Dictionary of the 
English Language, in two vols. 4to.) goes back to the age preceding that 
of Chaucer and gives a couple of quotations, one from Gloucester, another 
from Brunne, in which atonement and at-one-ment are identical : " Heo 
maden certeyne couenant," says Gloucester (p. 113) "that heo were all at 
one" Brunne says : " Sone thei were at one, with will at orf assent." 
Tyndall, too, whose New Testament and other publications appeared but a 
little later than the poems of Chaucer, gives this good advice to ministers 
and professors of the true religion : " That thou be feruent and diligent to 
make peace and to go betwene, where thou knowest or hearest malice or 
enuie to be, or seest hate or strife to arise betwene person and person, and 
that thou leaue nothing vnsought, to set them at one." Again (Tyndall"s 
Works, p. 258) " One God, one Mediatour (that is to say, Aduocate, Inter- 
'cessor, or an AtonemaJcer) between God and man." Tyndall, in this place, 
is showing that the work of Jesus on earth was a work of pacification, and 
quotes a note from M. W. Tracie (Testm. of Tr.) a still earlier authority, 
in which the mediatorship of Christ is set down as a simple work of recon- 
ciliation : "That there is but one Mediatour, Christ, as Paul, 1 Tim. 2; 
and by that word vnderstand an At-one-maier, a peace-maker." The 
earliest and ablest of our dramatic writers employ the word atone in 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



371 



The immediate disciples and subsequent representatives of 
Jesus pursued the same singleness of purpose. They "rose 
up and followed him," one leaving his boat and fishing-tackle, 
another his seat at the tax-house, and all whatever they had 
before practised, giving their whole time to the one great 
labor of preaching the doctrine of universal reconciliation. 
They were called "the ministers of Christ," and their 
business " the ministry of the reconciliation." They were 
styled " ambassadors for Christ," coming before the world 
with "the word of reconciliation," because this universal 
pacification was the one end and design of the Christian 
system: "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto 
himself." This was the enterprise of Christianity ; this was 
the work of God undertaken by his Son ; this was to be, 
therefore, the exclusive occupation of those who, after the 
ascension of our Lord, were to remain here and carry on the 
undertaking in his stead : " Now, then, we are ambassadors 
for Christ ; as though God did beseech you by us, we pray 
you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." And this 

the same fundamental sense. So Shakspeare (Othello, Act iv., sc. 1) 
says : 

" Lad. — Is there division twix-t my lord and Cassio ? 
Des. — A most unhappy one : I would do much 

T 1 attone them, for the love I bear to Cassio." 

So also Beaumont and Fletcher (Spanish Curate, Act ii., sc. 4) make a 
character to say : 

" I have been dt-one-ing two most wrangling neighbors." 

Milton (Par. Lost, b. iii.) advances toward the more modern use of the 
word : 

" He her aid 

Can never seek, once dead in sins and lost ; 
Atonement for himself, or offering meet, 
Indebted and undone, hath none to bring," 

but Dry den (Aurenge-Zeba, Act iii.) returns to the original signification : 



"The king and haughty empress, to our wonder, 
If not atoned,, yet seemingly at peace." 



372 



METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 



business they pursued with a wonderful exclusion of every 
other occupation. Like their Master, they refused to 'enter- 
tain and discuss topics not directly bearing upon the conver- 
sion of their hearers. They presented no such topics, no 
questions of a speculative character, in their discourses. 
The most of them were men so little educated, that they 
scarcely knew what speculations w^ere rife in the intellectual 
world around them ; and the only man among them, whose 
early advantages had made him familiar with all manner of 
philosophical disputes, and theories, and schools, would never 
suffer himself to appear to know anything about them. It 
was this abnegation of himself, of his intellectual attainments, 
that he refers to when saying that he made himself a fool for 
the sake of Christ. Whatever he knew, he made all his 
knowledge to center upon the one only work of reconciling 
the world to God, by preaching the doctrines of a system of 
universal love : " For I determined not to know anything 
among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." He warns 
the church against all worldly speculations, making it obliga- 
tory on it to receive, without entering into disputable mat- 
ters, such as God himself had received ; " Him that is weak 
in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations — for 
one believeth that he may eat all things — another, who is 
weak, eateth herbs — let not him that eateth despise him that 
eateth not — and let not him that eateth not judge him that 
eateth — for God hath received him." God looks not to your 
opinions, to your agreements, or to your differences, on 
questions outside of the simple act of the soul in becoming 
reconciled to him by an acceptance in the heart of his Son 
Jesus Christ. He has undertaken, by the wonderful scheme 
of giving up his Son for the sins of the world, to reconcile 
that world, to bring it into harmony with him and with 
itself; and this, therefore, is the only work given out from 
heaven to those who rise up, as Christian ministers, to follow 
in the footsteps of Christ. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



373 



Such being the single design of Christianity, and such the 
singleness of purpose among its earliest representatives, it is 
no wonder that the word of God ran and was glorified. Nor 
is it anything wonderful that men were "pricked at the 
heart ;" that thousands were converted in a day ; that the 
cry ran all over the country of the Jews : " Men and 
brethren, what shall we do ?" and that the doctrines of the 
cross soon shook the foundations of Judaism, and swept like 
a breeze over the Roman world. To produce such a result 
was the sole object of the apostles. They turned not aside 
to any other issue. All systems of philosophy, all sectarian 
questions, all human speculations, they cast away, or left 
behind them, that they might unite in the one general 
appeal : " Behold, behold, the Lamb !" Had they, however, 
been less single in their efforts ; had they given themselves, 
to any considerable extent, to the task of explaining the 
work wrought upon the world ; had they stopped to dispute 
with the philosophers, or contend with the sectaries, or to 
reason among themselves, concerning the intellectual ques- 
tions raised by their own growing success, the wheels of 
their glorious movement would have soon ceased to move. 
They did cease, indeed, in a subsequent age, at that very 
point when the Christians began to explain, to speculate, to 
reason, to refute, to make apologies for their religion, 
instead of pushing its victories by the simple process insti- 
tuted by their Master of preaching the doctrines of the 
cross ; and it is a historical fact, not to be disputed by any 
person of common information, that, from that point of time 
onward through a long series of ages, this one design of 
Christianity was lost sight of by what professed to be the 
Church of God on earth. Nor did the earliest reformers, 
Vigilantius, Huss, Jerome, and Wiclif, restore the practise 
of confining the propagators of our religion to this solitary 
work. Nor did Luther, Melanchthon, Zuinglius, Calvin, 
Knox, Cranmer, and their associates and successors, restore 



374: METHODISM IX RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 



this apostolic practice. Xot only did they all hold, as has 
been seen, that it is essential to put their names to a state- 
ment of the theory of their religion, but they acted accord- 
ingly, presenting in their discourses to the people, as well as 
in all their publications, questions which drew off the mind 
of their adherents from the "one thing needful" to such 
discussions as have puzzled the meta]3hysical schools of the 
past, and will continue to perplex the curious through all 
future ages. 

Nothing, indeed, is better established by the evidence of 
impartial history, than that John Wesley, in so many other 
things more enlightened than his predecessors, was the first- 
man, since the decline and fall of Christianity into popery, 
not only to discard all opinions as elements of the genuine 
Christian character, but to declare, by precept and example, 
that the preaching of what is essential to this character — 
love, faith, hope — a new creature in Christ Jesus — the pos- 
sibility and the means of being born again and of becoming a 
child and an heir of God— is the single and only business of a 
preacher. It is true, Mr. Wesley did engage to some extent 
in controversy ; but he did so only when attacked ; and he 
afterward regretted that he had ever swerved from his 
original purpose of keeping clear of it. He never turned 
aside, however, to discuss irrelevant, doubtful, or unessential 
topics in his sermons. Let any reader rim over the titles of 
those now extant in his published works ; and it will at once 
appear how scrupulously he confined himself, though the 
founder of a new denomination, to the solitary business of 
preaching " Jesus Christ and him crucified." His whole 
life, in fact, was spent in the endeavor to revive in the 
world, not a set of dogmas, but the life and power of 
original Christianity. Whether men's creeds were correct 
or incorrect, he strove to make them, with or without their 
creeds, religious. On going into a new district of country, he 
scarcely inquired whether the population generally received 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



375 



the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England, or the 
seventeen articles of Targau, or the twenty-one of Augs- 
burg, or the catechism of the Puritans, or the platform of 
any of the Dissenters, or whether they denied all these con- 
fessions, and swung upon some pivot of their own, or even 
rejected all forms of our faith whatsoever, he pursued the 
uniform course of his ministry, holding up before his 
audiences the sinfulness of mankind, the necessity of being 
born again, and the steps to be taken in coming out of the 
darkness of nature into the light of God. He spoke, there- 
fore, with wonderful authority ; for he was not disseminating 
opinions, deduced by ever so careful a use of his powers of 
ratiocination, in which a person of intelligence will always 
utter himself with becoming diffidence and modesty ; but he 
was a simple ambassador for God, acting in his behalf, 
repeating his denunciations, holding up his invitations, and 
compelling all men alike to look to the present condition of 
their souls, and to the bliss and retributions of eternity. If 
a Church formalist sat before him, he called out to him, not 
to throw away the form, but to seek the power of godliness, 
and give himself up to the great end of his creation. If a 
back-slidden Puritan were among his hearers, the exhortation 
was to rise and do his first works, and then put himself in 
battle array under the great Captain of his salvation. If a 
speculating Deist, or even a professed and open Atheist, 
ventured into his presence, he turned out into no debates on 
deistical and atheistical theories of the universe, into no dis- 
sertations on the false assumptions of Democritus and Leu- 
cippus, into no diatribes on the French Encyclopedists and 
Illuminati, but poured ont the most fervent prayers, the 
most faithful warnings, the most heart-searching exhorta- 
tions, holding up before his captious auditors, as St. Paul had 
done among the philosophers at Athens, nothing but " Jesus 
and the resurrection." This, and this alone, was the sub- 
stance of what he preached to the scholars of Oxford and 



376 



METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 



the colliers of the northern hills. He preached it to the 
nobility at Bath and to the inmates of the London jails. He 
preached it among the domineering inhabitants of England, 
among the bigoted population of Scotland, and among every 
class, from the princes to the beggars, of priest-ridden 
Ireland. His adherents were instructed to imitate, and even 
to emulate, his example ; and the world knows the result of 
this remarkable concentration of purpose and of effort. 
Great Britain was shaken to its foundations ; creeds, confes- 
sions, and systems of opinion were forgotten amidst the 
throes of this religious revolution ; the heart resumed its 
rightful place as the fountain-head of all the streams of the 
moral life ; and men began generally to inquire into the 
condition of their souls, into their state of preparation for 
eternity, because this was the only subject urged upon them 
by the heralds of this new reform. 

Such was the singleness of Methodism in the mother 
country; and such was its singleness after it had crossed the 
Atlantic and found a still wider theater for its exertions and 
its triumphs on our native soil. Though they had come to a 
land that knew no partialities to the different phases ol 
Christianity, at least where the general law vas just and 
equal ; though they might here pursue any organic bias, or 
constitutional tendency, without the least restraint ; the 
ministry of early Methodism in America adhered most 
rigidly to the single undertaking of their founder, of reviv- 
ing Scriptural Christianity, of restoring genuine, heartfelt 
religion, whose beginning was to be born again, and whose 
consummation was supreme love to God and love toward 
our fellow-men. They remembered that Mr. Wesley had 
regretted what little share he had had in controversv : that 
he had once apologized for spending fifteen minutes in a 
private debate about a system of opinions ; that he had, at 
another time, refused to leave his work to receive a call from 
Dr. Johnson, whom princes entertained with as much pride 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



377 



as pleasure; and that he had enjoined upon all who might 
choose to follow in his path to preach " the essence of 
Christianity, and nothing else, in every sermon." Like him, 
therefore, whom they so much respected for his work's sake, 
they came to our shores speaking of nothing but how a man 
might be saved from his sins and filled with the spirit of 
universal love. To this point they directed every effort. 
Whoever came to hear them, whether Franklin with his 
philosophic habits, or Washington from the battle-field of 
the Revolution, or the soldiers and sailors of the government, 
or the humblest of our citizens, the theme was always the 
personal salvation, the present and eternal safety of those 
before them. At whatsoever point of the human heart the 
blow was aimed at any time, by any preacher of this great 
salvation, the thoughtful listener could easily perceive, that 
everything in the course of the service — the hymns, the 
prayers, the text, the sermon, the exhortation — was leveled 
in the same direction. The minister never deviated from his 
one work to discuss philosophical propositions, or theologi- 
cal theses, or political and social questions. Not denying 
that there is a field for such discussions somewhere, nor that 
there are men called to enter into them, they, nevertheless, 
regarded it as their business to concentrate all their energies 
upon the single work of saving men's souls by the foolish- 
ness of preaching. Their word was " concentration y" they 
had but one thing to do ; they would do nothing else ; to 
whatever compass of effort, in the pulpit and out of it, as 
the propagators and defenders of primitive Christianity, their 
great enterprise might impel them. The conversion of the 
people from darkness to light, from sin to holiness, was their 
acknowledged center ; and the consequence was, the new 
world was soon all ablaze by their ministrations, and they 
were ready to unite with their English brethren in the 
triumphal song — 



378 



METHODISM IX RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY '. 



"See how great a flame aspires, 
Kindled by a spark of grace! 
Jesus' love the nations fires — 
Sets the kingdoms in a blaze !" 

Revival spread upon revival over all the land ; error was 
beaten back ; the old order of things passed away ; a new 
order came upon the world ; a new denomination, as wide as 
our empire, and as established as our hills, rose up and stood 
upon our soil, whose walls were called " Salvation " and whose 
gates "Praise." Salvation and praise, conversion of the 
heart and confession of the mouth, have ever since been the 
one work of every succeeding generation of American 
Methodism ; it has been the one work in England, in Scot- 
land, and in Ireland ; it has been the one work of Method- 
ism on the continent of Europe, among the Brahmins of 
India, among the inhabitants of the Flowery Empire, among 
the low and degraded offspring of down-trodden Africa, and 
on all the islands of the seas. It has performed miracles, in 
a word, in the production of the original Christian character, 
because the production, preservation, and propagation of this 
character have occupied its whole attention and employed all 
its energies. "While other denominations have been working 
out and establishing opinions, dogmas, creeds, and confes- 
sions, and through these striving to bring about a reforma- 
tion of the heart and life, Methodism has struck directly and 
exclusively at the heart itself, knowing that when this is 
brought to act solely from the promptings of the law of uni- 
versal love, the head and the whole man, including his opinions 
and his habits, will not be slow in finding out and falling 
into a willing and easy acquiescence with the truth. 

Such has been and such is Methodism, the world over, in 
regard to its power of producing the true, original, ideal 
Christian character ; and it is equally efficient and peculiar 
in its method of preserving that character when thus pro- 
duced. The very first idea of the Methodist organization, 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



379 



indeed, as a system of societies, was the preservation of the 
piety of its adherents. It was this idea that prompted to the 
formation of its first class ; it was this idea that led to the 
subsequent multiplication of these classes ; and it was this 
idea, ever kept in view, which finally reduced these widely- 
scattered classes into one general system, and breathed into 
the whole mass the breath of organic life. Let us bring 
out this allegation by applying it to a case in point ; and it 
will be seen how admirably the Methodist organization is 
adapted to conserve the piety of those whom its previous 
ministrations may have roused into a sense of danger and then 
led into a consciousness of actual religious life. So soon as 
a person arrives at this point of his experience, he is not left 
to wander along his way alone, or to live in comparative 
seclusion from others who have had the same experience. 
~Nor is he left to find what aid he may from the public minis- 
trations of the Gospel, and from the social means of grace, 
without some special help. He is at once taken by the hand, 
and made, by his consent, a member of a class, which con- 
sists of twelve or more persons, male and female, who meet 
once a week for the particular purpose of talking upon the 
one only subject of their personal condition in the religious 
life. When he makes his appearance at his class, he is asked 
to relate the substance of what he has experienced, or at least 
to answer such interrogations as no man can answer affirma- 
tively, and not be a Christian of the practical and positive 
character heretofore described. Every week he goes there 
to submit his heart, his experience, his life, to the same 
searching examination. Every day of every week is spent 
under the recollection that, at the appointed time, he is to 
go and give of himself this strict personal account. He 
feels, however, that this being called upon to make a verbal 
statement of his case is a great assistance to the formation 
of correct conceptions of his real character as a Christian, and 
that the regularity of this examination, coming statedly once 



380 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY '. 

a week, tends to make his whole life regular, methodical, 
and hence settled and successful. Some of the most eminent 
Christians of all time, like Edwards and Payson, have com- 
pelled themselves to undergo a similar examination, con- 
ducted on the plan of answering weekly, sometimes daily, a 
series of interrogatories which they had previously written 
down ; and some mere moralists, like Dr. Franklin, have 
pursued the same course of self-treatment ; 'but the member 
of this religious class, of whom I have been speaking, may 
not be a person of sufficient strength of purpose, or of the 
right mental constitution, to attend regularly and. faithfully 
to this work without the aid. of an appointment, such as he 
makes with his fellow-members, for the habitual performance 
of this office ; and he soon finds that the regular duties of 
the class-room have established, upon him a habit of self- 
scrutiny, which operates not daily or weekly only, but every 
hour of every day and. week. He suffers no embarrassment 
in the weekly relation of his experience ; for he finds that his 
class-mates are as free with him as he is expected to be with 
them ; they deal in no statements respecting their private 
affairs, nor in relation to the affairs, public or private, of their 
neighbors ; their only business is to tell, as did the king of 
Israel, what the Lord may have done for their souls during 
the week just concluded ; he follows along in the same way 
and spirit, stating distinctly what he feels to be his condition 
in the sight of God ; and he enjoys the advantage of com- 
paring his conscious life with the inward experience of those, 
who have as little motive as himself for concealing or mis- 
representing any part of what has been taking place within 
them. It is a particular advantage of this meeting, too, that 
every person in it is a professing Christian, who, as a speaker 
on the occasion, will have something to relate of the Christ- 
ian life ; and the variety of relations is such, that no one can 
be long a member, without finding many things stated by 
his associates suited to his own wants, or throwing special 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 381 

light upon the path that lies before him. If he has a mind 
for such a thing, he can compare all the experiences together, 
not only those of an evening, but those of a year or more, and 
by this large induction, all the while growing larger and wider, 
may arrive at a very correct general idea of what is regarded 
as a standard of the true religious life. He may take this 
standard into comparison with w 7 hat he finds, in his general 
intercourse with Christians, to be the common experience of 
religious people ; and with all this preparation, he may go 
finally to the word of God, and lay all his investigations in 
the clear and settled sunlight of revelation, and thus, by 
having first made sure what knowledge he could obtain from 
the confidential relations of his class-room, he becomes a per- 
son of wise opinions and fixed habits in respect to everything 
vital in the Christian life and character. His piety is all the 
while growing, because he is all the while cultivating and 
taking care of it ; because he has the aid of other equally 
experienced persons in the common w r ork of living according 
to the Gospel ; because he has the assistance of those who are 
particularly acquainted wdth his wants and deeply interested 
in his progress ; and he grows in piety the faster, too, because 
he sees it to be the most important question with all of those 
with whom he maintains this close connection, and the only 
thing considered of paramount importance in the denomina- 
tion of which he finds himself a member : for when, as a 
member of this little band of confidential Christians, he steps 
into a meeting for social prayer, or attends upon the public 
ministrations of the pulpit, he sees at a glance that every- 
thing said and done points in this one direction ; and so he 
passes along, from w T eek to week, and from year to year, and 
to the very end of his earthly career, feeling constantly 
about him the pressure of an atmosphere that forces into 
him the conviction of the worthlessness of creeds and con- 
fessions, but the absolute necessity of a regenerated heart 
and a life of corresponding piety. He may never once be 



382 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 

asked, during his entire membership in the denomination, 
what he thinks about any opinion, or set of opinions, while 
he is expected to state, once a week, and with the most per- 
fect freedom, all that he thinks about his personal position as 
a child of God and a candidate for eternity; and he knows 
and feels that prevarication and concealment can be of no 
avail ; for his statement, or deficiency of statement, is all 
the while certain to be compared, by those who know 
him intimately, with the general tenor of his conduct. So 
soon, therefore, as any of these members of a class become too 
cool in their piety, too wanting in love and confidence to- 
ward their fellows, for this weekly scrutiny of their religious 
character, they silently neglect these confidential meetings, 
and thus expose to their associates, and particularly to their 
watchful leader, the very thing which they had hoped to 
cover ; and then comes, from all concerned, the needed help 
— help of every conceivable character — till the fainting flame 
is happily rekindled, w r hen there is oftentimes as much rejoic- 
ing (for I have witnessed such scenes myself) as there could 
be over the recovery of a human being from death in any 
of the forms in which it generally comes upon us. Should a 
person fall entirely away, forsake his associations, and sink 
into the sins which he had once abandoned, he knows that 
he is followed, in his lowest disgrace and misery, by the 
peculiar sorrow of those with whom he was once so confiden- 
tial and familiar ; he knows that his vacant seat in the class- 
room will never cease to be remembered, that his name will 
often mingle with the petitions of his old associates, and 
that nothing will be left* untried, in this his hour of desertion 
and degradation, which holds out the faintest prospect of 
winning him back to duty and to happiness. So strong, 
indeed, is the tie that binds together the membership of a 
denomination, which makes piety, and not opinion, the great 
object of their pursuit and culture, that they hold one ano- 
ther up in the ordinary walk of Christian life as the members 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



383 



of other denominations would scarcely be prepared to under- 
stand ; and it so fastens itself upon the heart of even its 
erring members, that no one of them can utterly discard his 
religion, without committing a sort of suicide upon every 
correct and noble principle of his nature. 3 

I will now suppose that the individual, whose career has 
been imagined, has remained in connection with his class till 
he has won the confidence of his associates, and proved 
himself to be a man of genuine and fervent piety ; and I will 

3 It is asserted by Dr. Cook (Centuries, vol. ii., p. 36), that more per- 
sons backslide from Methodism, notwithstanding its means of preserving 
piety, than from any other denomination, and he wonders over his own 
statement. There is really nothing worthy of his wonder. There are, in 
the same way, more deaths in New York city than in the metropolis of 
Louisiana, not because it is more sickly in New York than in New Orleans, 
but because there happen to be more people there capable of dying. 
Besides, Dr. Cook ought to remember that Methodism is the only denomi- 
nation, within the circle of his acquaintance, which makes personal piety 
the only test of membership, and the only one that brings all its mem- 
bers to the scrutiny of this test once a week. In other religious bodies, 
a subscription to the creed, and one relation of experience at the begin- 
ning (and this is not always called for) answers for a lifetime, so that their 
members may become as inanimate as stones, as cold and stiff as the dead, 
without incurring the risk of being detected as persons fallen from their 
religion. In other words, the denomination to which Dr. Cook belongs, 
as well as others, suffers its backsliders to remain in their churches, while 
Methodism, by its peculiar system, discovers them, and thus drops them 
out. Let all the religious bodies in the world adopt the Methodist plan of 
bringing all their members to the test of personal religion, and that every 
week ; and then let Dr. Cook take the census of those who should be found 
unwilling, or unable, to stand this ordeal of their faith. Till then, all such 
comparisons as he makes are of no account. He might as well complain 
of the largest flouring-mill on the continent for the extraordinary quantity 
of bran it turns out ; and yet, it would be still better business for him to 
complain of those less perfect establishments, which turn out little or no 
bran at all, partly because they do but a paltry business, and partly for 
the reason that they have no means of sep'arating the pure article from 
what the French call canaille. With them, all goes in and out together ! 



38i METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY '. 

then assert, from the very animus of a society which makes 
this piety the sole test of membership, that, in case a person 
is looked for to fill a vacant office, he will be at once 
regarded as eligible to the position in proportion to his repu- 
tation for personal religion. From whatever motives, also, 
such a person might happen to desire promotion, nothing is 
plainer to his vision than that a strict regard to his growth 
in the spiritual life is the most certain pathway to ultimate 
success ; and I will leave the candid and thinking reader to 
infer what salutary influences must be exerted upon the 
religious character of the members of a denomination, where 
the places of usefulness and honor are most open, not to men 
of money, nor to individuals of ambitious views and aspira- 
tions, nor to persons whom the outside world covers with its 
approbation, but to those who recommend themselves by 
their sincere, warm, and yet unassuming piety. Personal 
piety having been the test upon which all the members 
received, as well as continue to hold, their membership, it is 
nothing more than a natural consequence that they should 
make this the chief qualification for any particular position 
to be conferred upon candidates for office ; and I shall be 
frank enough to state, that, from my personal observation 
for the past thirty years, I know that this has been practically 
regarded as the leading recommendation for the elevation of 
private members to official stations, in the transactions of 
American and European Methodism. No one would say, 
indeed, that no cold and lifeless members have been raised 
to places of trust and power in the denomination. Too 
many, alas ! of this character have found their way to such 
positions ; but I still insist, that it is according to the nature 
of the case, according to the theory and general temper of 
the body, to advance individuals mainly for their exhibiting 
the marks of that personal and practical religion, which has 
been seen to be the center, the very soul of the entire organ- 
ization; and this fact constitutes a w eighty argument for 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



385 



my proposition that there is no other religions body in the 
world possessing and exerting so manifest and direct a ten- 
dency toward the preservation, as well as the production, of 
original, genuine, apostolic Christianity. 

Let us take another step, however, in this important 
examination. I will now suppose that our hypothetic indivi- 
dual, who has been made a member and then an officer 
from the leading recommendation of his piety, happens in 
time to regard himself as called to the office and labors of a 
minister. How does he obtain this rank in Methodism ? 
Does he assume it and then act accordingly? He may 
assume it with ever so much boldness or pertinacity, but he 
must pass through more than one examination, before he can 
put on the robes of the ministerial order. And what would 
the reader imagine to constitute the substance of these ex- 
aminations in a denomination built up around the central 
idea of personal religion ? The candidate is examined by 
those who know him, who have seen his daily walk, who 
have associated with him in class, in the social meetings, in 
the public worship. ISTo persons from abroad are called in, 
none can come in, to take part in the examination of a 
stranger ; those who put the questions and those who judge 
and decide from the answers given, are persons who have 
learned by their own reception and promotion what stress is 
laid, in the denomination they represent, on the fact of per- 
sonal religion ; they are men who have been thus taught the 
paramount necessity of piety in the ministry, in the official 
teachers and supporters, of such a denomination ; and then, 
so careful is that denomination of this point, the questions to 
be presented have been written out and stereotyped from 
the beginning of its history : First, " Do they know God as 
a pardoning God? Have they the love of God abiding in 
them ? Do they desire nothing but God ? And are they 
holy in all manner of conversation ?" Secondly, " Have they 
gifts (as well as grace) for the work ? Have they (in some 

n 



386 



METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY '. 



tolerable degree) a clear, sound understanding, a right judg- 
ment in the things of God, a just conception of salvation by 
faith ? And has God given them any degree of utterance ? 
Do they speak justly, readily, clearly ?" Thirdly, " Have 
they fruit ? Are any truly convinced of sin, and converted 
to God, by their preaching ?" These, reader, are the three 
sets of questions to be determined by the examination of the 
ministerial candidates of Methodism in every quarter of the 
world. And do you see, or rather do you not see, how 
clearly they point out the main qualification of a Christian 
minister ? The three classes of questions amount to precisely 
these : Is the candidate a converted man, possessing a rege- 
nerate nature, and a heart alive with the impulses of univer- 
sal love ? Has he the ability to relate what he has expe- 
rienced, and to set forth the substance of our religion, in a 
clear and convincing manner ? Has he demonstrated the j^os- 
session of that grace, and of those gifts, by having brought 
forth fruit, by having become the means of salvation to any of 
his fellow-men ? The three qualifications, in a word, are grace, 
gifts and usefulness, but the first and greatest of the three is 
grace ; and the reader must see, that from the beginning to 
the end, from the humblest to the highest position, in a career 
of private, official and representative membership in the Metho- 
dist denomination, every individual is prompted to have his 
chief care upon that fundamental element of the genuine 
Christian character by the recommendation of which he was 
originally examined and received. 

This high and severe regard to personal piety is conspicu- 
ous upon every part of Methodism ; and a candid thinker 
may conclude, not that too much stress is laid upon it, so far 
as the private membership is concerned, but that it is too 
prominent among the qualifications of a clergyman ; for the 
three things demanded of him may be, by a perfectly philo- 
sophical process, reduced to one — that Christian experience, 
from which the remaining two proceed, or in obedience to 



THF SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



387 



which they act ; nothing is said here about the qualifications 
derived from education ; and history has_ been brought to 
show, that Methodism has always rested its cause mainly 
upon the exertion of such powers as God's converting grace 
has chanced to find, to develop, to employ, in the hearts 
and heads of those it has sent forth to preach. Now then, 
so far as this is so, let us admit the fact ; but let us at the 
same time look deep enough into the very nature of the 
Wesleyan movement, to know how to justify it for reposing 
so much confidence in an average amount of native ability of 
mind, acting under the influence of a conscious experience 
of the work of God wrought upon the heart. When this 
man of God, this truly converted minister, this herald of 
Scriptural Christianity, according to the definition of it given 
by Mr. Wesley, goes forth into the field, what does he pro- 
fess, what does he undertake to do ? Does he go out to 
teach philosophy, natural or metaphysical ? Does he go out 
to teach mathematics, pure, or as applied to mechanical 
forces, or to the heavenly bodies ? Does he go out to teach 
language, or literature, or science in any of its various 
departments ? Does he go out to teach a theory, whether 
material or intellectual, whether as a disciple of Leucippus or 
of Dr. Cud worth, of this general frame of being called by us 
the universe ? Does he go out, indeed, to teach any sys- 
tem or the part of any system, excogitated and established 
by human reason ? Does he not go out, on the contrary, to 
read the philosophy, the mathematics, the language, the litera- 
ture which he finds plainly written down before him, and to 
declare the substance of what all these things signify by 
relating the testimony of his own heartfelt experience ? 
Does he not go out, in other words, to teach the possibility 
and then the fact of this personal religion, which constitutes 
the fullness and the fulfillment of the whole law of God, and 
which he has found, by a conscious reception of it, to be the 
one thing needful ? He does not go out, according to the 



38 S METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 

Wesleyan theory of preaching, to explain, but to state it. 
He goes out, not to analyze, but to offer it. If any one 
inquires how it is that he was once a sinner, benighted, 
wretched, and looking forward with distress to nothing but 
a continuation of his misery, and yet now leaps for the joy of 
what he feels within him, he answers with the man whom 
Jesus healed of his blindness, and whom the Jews vexed 
with the same irrelevant interrogatories : " I know not: one 
thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." He 
stands before his congregations as a living demonstration, or 
as St. Paul would call him, a living epistle, known and read 
of all men, and calls them to behold in himself what God is 
endeavoring to do, and there and then has it in his mind to 
do, for every one of them : " Come and hear," he exclaims, 
with the pious king of Israel, 15 all ye that fear God, and I 
will declare what he hath done foe my soul !" His work, 
indeed, is very simple. It is not to expound the theory, but to 
state the fact, of the salvation which is by Jesus Christ. It is 
not to explain the mysteries of earth and heaven — the mystery 
of the Godhead — the mystery of the Incarnation — the mys- 
tery of the Atonement — the mystery of Justification by 
Faith — nor any other of the mysteries of godliness lying 
beyond the reach of the human faculties — but to repeat a 
truth, which, whatever be the explanation of it, he knows 
has had its demonstration in his own heart and life. Accord- 
ing to his view, Christianity is not a system of opinions, to 
be addressed to the intellect and enforced by human rea- 
sons, but a system of facts — facts derived exclusively by 
revelation, and presented solely upon the authority of God — 
capable of the highest possible demonstration by individual 
experience. It may indeed be called a science, and the 
science of all sciences ; but it is a practical science — a science 
based on observation and experiment — the proof of which 
lies in testing it. Precisely, therefore, as a chemist, after 
stating that the mixing of certain elements, or the per* 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 389 

formance of certain conditions, will produce a specified 
result, submits his statement to the test of an experiment by- 
way of proof, so does the preacher, when he has declared 
what is wanted and how the desired end is to be obtained, 
as laid clown in the word of God, declare in the language of 
revelation : " Taste and see that the Lord is good." He 
may, indeed, like the man of natural science, say that the 
end proposed has been promised on the authority of God ; 
and that the mode of attaining it has been proved by the 
trial and success of many persons in different countries and 
in various ages of the world : he may thus produce a strong 
conviction upon his hearers of the truth of what he declares 
can in this way be done ; he may proceed to give greater 
strength to this conviction by stating that he has tried the 
experiment for himself, calling upon them to behold in him 
what Christianity can do for them ; but, after all, like that 
same natural philosopher, he finally brings out all the instru- 
ments necessary for the occasion, and then warmly exhorts 
those listening to his discourse to make the trial of the truth 
of Christianity in their own persons and on their own behalf. 
He thus makes religion a practical affair, like every other 
matter admitting of this class of proof. He takes it from the 
hands of speculative theologians, who would show what it 
must be by a priori arguments, or by applying the syllogism 
of logic to premises assumed, and hands it over to those, who, 
in the spirit of all real science, establish all propositions 
capable of such treatment by the evidence of observation 
and experiment. Methodism, in a word, not only follows 
the example, the precept, and the spirit of original Christ- 
ianity in this department of its work, but it is, on the 
severest examination, the much-vaunted and justly celebrated 
system of the Baconian philosophy applied to the theory of 
preaching; and it is this fact, so long neglected to be 
observed, which justified its founder in laying such stress on 
grace, gifts and fruit — all of them the elements of a genuine 



390 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY! 



experience of personal religion — as the paramount qualifica- 
tions for the ministerial work. Almost any person of good 
natural sense, whose soul had been converted, and whose life 
was changed, could go out and state the fact ; lie could 
relate his experience while passing through this conversion, 
this fundamental change, as a demonstration of the truth 
and reliability of what he said ; he could look around him, 
perhaps, and certainly go back to the records of the Church, 
and gather up numerous and even conspicuous examples of 
what he testified to himself; he could then easily show, if he 
could read his mother tongue, that his own experience, and 
the experience of all the witnesses he had adduced, was pre- 
cisely such as is promised in the word of God, and such as is 
there illustrated by the most pertinent cases in point, from 
the call of Abraham to the conversion of St. Paul, and 
from St. Paul through the entire period of the great apos- 
tolic revival, which rolled like a wave of glory over the 
Roman world. The very first conversion occurring under 
his ministry would be an ocular demonstration of what he 
taught, by far outweighing all the arguments, which all the 
philosophers and all the speculative theologians could devise ; 
and as these proofs multiplied, the force of his style of teach- 
ing the Gospel would grow, till, like an overflowing river, it 
would sweep everything before it. 

Nothing, indeed, is more simple, and nothing more power- 
ful and overwhelming, than the business of teaching Christ- 
ianity by knowing nothing but Jesus Christ and him 
crucified ; by reaching the head and habits of mankind by 
going through the heart ; by ceasing to explain and expound 
what is absolutely above and beyond all human comprehen- 
sion ; by cleaving to the simple and intelligible declarations 
of the Bible ; by being able to say that you know and feel 
the truth of those declarations by your personal experience; 
and by calling upon the world, not to wrangle about the pos- 
sibilities and probabilities, the nature and relations, the 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



391 



causes and consequences of things revealed, nor to dispute 
how and why things are as they are stated in the books of 
revelation, but to receive them as facts given to us from 
heaven, and which we may all bring to the argumentum 
crucis of observation and experiment, by which we test the 
declarations of every other science. Were it the preacher's 
business, I admit, to take the opposite course in his ministra- 
tions—to reach the heart and life entirely through the intel- 
lect — to rouse mankind to put faith in Jesus Christ by giving 
them a true theory of the universe, in which the character, 
relations and obligations, personal and reciprocal, of God, 
the individual, and the family of creation throughout earth 
and heaven must be clearly and comprehensively set forth — 
to show by irrefragable logic in what manner and for what 
reasons these three beings, God, man, and the universe, so 
stand together, by the laws of their existence, before and 
after the fall, and throughout both dispensations, that all the 
statements of a certain creed, or confession, or catechism, 
must be undeniably correct, and may be, therefore, pressed 
upon the human understanding for re sept ion and assent prior 
to being acknowledged as a true and worthy follower of 
Jesus Christ — then, indeed, a minister must not only be as 
learned as any of these denominations have demanded, but 
more intelligent than it is possible for any man to be. If this 
is the true theory of preaching, then the poor fishermen of 
Galilee, and nine-tenths of their successors for two or three 
centuries, must have had a sorry time in the work which they 
undertook. If arguing and defending the propositions of a 
modern creed, like that of Luther or of Calvin, is the genuine 
work of preaching the Gospel, then Jesus made a sad 
mistake in addressing himself so incessantly to the unculti- 
vated masses of Judea, who, in their ignorance, would not 
have been capable of comprehending the literal signification 
of one article in ten, to say nothing of the arguments in 
proof. In that case, too, he made a yet sadder mistake in 



392 METHODISM IN KELA.TION TO CHRISTIANITY I 



calling upon Peter, and John, and James to quit their nets, 
and take up the profession of expounding a system, par- 
ticular and complete, of universal truth. Such, however, is 
not the true theory of preaching. Ministers are nothing but 
witnesses before a court. Christ, as a teacher of human 
salvation, is on trial ; his system is under examination ; the 
court is the human family ; and the clergyman stands up, as 
St. John expresses it, to state what he has known and seen : 
" We speak that we do know, and testify that we have 
seen ;" and it was only in this view of the case that St. Paul 
was justified in making himself "a fool for Christ's sake" — 
that is, refusing to know anything but " Jesus Christ and 
him crucified" — which every sane man, with a very moderate 
share of natural talent and intellectual cultivation, may both 
know and do. 

This, at all events, was Mr. Wesley's view of the theory 
of preaching ; the great qualification, he thought, for the 
work of the ministry, is the minister's own conversion ; and 
it was by thus following what he looked upon as the example 
of original Christianity, of the apostles and of Christ himself, 
that he regarded it possible for men of good sense and of a 
sound experience to do efficient ministerial service by going 
forth and declaring what, as the Lord's witnesses — " ye are 
my witnesses, saith the Lord " — they have felt in themselves, 
beheld in others, and read of in the pages of revelation. It 
was by this process, too, let it be distinctly seen, that he 
made the best possible provision for preserving that piety, 
that personal religion, that ideal Christianity, which consti- 
tuted the soul and center of his movement ; for it has been 
observed, not only that every member of the denomination is 
received on the basis of his piety, and every officer of it 
recommended to elevation by the same qualification, but that 
every minister, from the preacher of a circuit to the superin- 
tending bishop, is raised to his position by those who under- 
stand that personal religion is the fundamental principle of 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



393 



their system. That system, too, not only receives and pro- 
motes men on this ground, but it is a system of the strictest 
surveillance over the continued piety of every individual con- 
nected with it, the members being all required to state their 
experience weekly before the leaders of their classes, the 
leaders being under the constant supervision of their 
preacher, the preachers having to undergo a strict examina- 
tion once a year before their bishop, and the bishops them- 
selves standing up, every fourth year, to give account of their 
religious condition, as well as official acts, in the presence of 
the assembled representatives of the entire denomination. 
If Methodism, therefore, is an efficient organization for the 
production of ideal Christianity, as I have endeavored to 
prove true, may I not now affirm, that it surpasses all 
religious bodies in its provisions for the preservation of that 
ideal ? 

With a feeling of some confidence, that the intelligent 
and candid reader will not find it in his heart to deny this 
conclusion, nor in his knowledge much support to a denial 
coming from any quarter, I will proceed to establish, if pos- 
sible, the third and final position of this chapter, that Metho- 
dism is also the best existing system for the propagation of 
what has been shown to be the essence of Christianity ; and, 
for the purpose of keeping the several arguments to be 
employed distinct to the eye of the reader, as well as clear to 
his understanding, I will indicate the successive steps taken 
in the discussion by numeral figures ; for I am solicitous that, 
when the facts and reasonings of the case are finished, there 
shall be left no want of any perception of my meaning, nor, 
if that may be, any rational doubt of what I propose to 
show. 

1. Time has already been taken to state that Methodism 
employs only an experienced ministry — a ministry possessed 
of the heartfelt piety, of the personal religion, which it was 
organized to inculcate ; and it has been seen how the para* 

3 7* 



39tt METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 

mount regard paid to this ministerial piety exerts a conser- 
vative influence on the piety of the entire denomination; but 
now we are to go out into the world and behold what a 
power it confers upon the heralds of this salvation in their 
efforts for the conversion of their fellow-men. It is obvious 
to every one, that, if a man wishes to water his garden, he 
must carry out water for that purpose ; or, if he desires to 
burn anything, that he must carry with him fire. Such is the 
nature of all human labor ; and it is equally reasonable to 
assert that a minister, who goes into the world to convince 
men of the truth of Christianity, or to make men Christians, 
can do nothing better than to take with him a specimen 
of what he proposes to accomplish. As it is his mission to 
persuade mankind to accept of Jesus Christ as their personal 
Redeemer, as their Redeemer from sin and misery, as the 
only means of present and eternal happiness, it would be well 
for him, if he could do no better, always to have with him an 
eminent example of his doctrines — the example of a man who 
had accepted of Christ and had been thus transformed from 
wretchedness to a high state of felicity — that he might, as 
the conclusion and demonstration of every sermon, say to his 
auditors : " Here you have before you a living proof of every- 
thing I have asserted about the supernatural, the miraculous, 
the wonderful virtue there is in Christianity to make every 
individual of the race happy. See ! he that was once poor 
now feels rich, being made, as he thinks and feels, ' an heir 
of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ.' He that before 
was in that distress, which always attends doubt, now ' knows 
that he has passed from death unto life,' and that his life 'is 
hid with Christ in God.' He that before was separated from 
all the world, and from his Creator, ' by an evil heart of 
unbelief,' now rejoices 'as a child of God,' and is joined to 
every human being by the tie of universal love. Nothing 
now depresses, nothing now throws him down. He stands 
erect in trouble, he exults in affliction, ' in everything giving 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 5'95 

thanks.' I found him degraded by vice, profane in speech, 
without principle in his dealings, corrupt and corrupting in 
his example, and avoided, shunned, dispised, by every honest 
citizen. I present him to you a new man, another being, 
with his vices replaced by virtues, most reverent and capti- 
vating in his conversation, a paragon of honorable conduct 
in all things, exerting the most salutary influence upon his 
associates, and welcomed as a benefactor and a blessing by all 
who have the happiness to know him. This glorious refor- 
mation, this revolution of his nature, has been produced in 
him, as he says, and as I believe, by the regenerating power 
of the Spirit of God according to the Christian system. He 
is a trophy, a monument, a represntative of that religion which 
I am come to publish. Ye, then, now in doubt, in sin, in 
wretchedness, who have a desire to be rendered happy — and 
this is the universal desire of man — bow at the feet of that 
Redeemer, by whom he has been thus washed, thus renewed, 
thus clothed with the beautiful garments of life and immor- 
tality, and become what he is !" Would not this be effectual 
preaching ? And yet the auditors, with whatever admiration 
they might receive so pertinent an appeal, could scarcely fail 
to turn round to the preacher and inquire why he had not 
himself pursued the course which he so urgently recommended 
them to take. With what additional force, therefore, with 
what irresistible power, would that messenger of God con- 
tinue and consummate his argument, could he truthfully 
reply : " Right ! my respected fellow-mortals. Your demand 
is just. Precisely so far as I do not, or may not, demonstrate 
to your charity that I have followed the advice I give, so far 
you are at liberty, from the nature of things, to judge mc 
wanting in sincerity and hence a standing argument against 
the system which I profess to advocate. But, blessed be 
the Author of this salvation ! I feel that its fullness is now 
reigning over the affections of my heart. I am myself a new 
creature in Christ Jesus. Once I was lost, and wretched, and 



39.6 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY '. 

undone. Now I am a member, through love and faith, of 
that glorious household, which occupies and is to occupy the 
universe, and whose head is no less than the everlasting God. 
The great question of my life is settled — it is settled for time 
and for eternity — the settlement of it brings me a peace and 
joy beyond the reach of human language — my immortality 
has begun below ; for I feel that the faith, by which I 
accepted Christ, has indeed become to me, according to the 
apostolic declaration, 4 the substance of things hoped for, the 
evidence of things not seen,' and the life that I now live is so 
full of comfort, so replete with happpiness, that I shall be 
satisfied if it only continue of the same kind, however it may 
alter in degree, through the ages of eternity. I know that 
Christianity is true ; that it is the means of the most perfect 
renewal of our nature ; that it is the source of the highest 
possible enjoyment ; for I am myself, by the goodness of God, 
a monument of this saving grace, of this wonderful system of 
recovery, and as happy every moment as I can have a wish, 
or think it possible for a man to be. Come, then, ye that 
are weary and heavy-laden ; come ye seekers after worldly 
pleasures ; come ye rich and ye poor ; ye bond and free — ye 
of every race, and clime, and country come — and be as I am, 
satisfied w T ith the joys of this living life, which I know has 
come to me from this system of religion which I preach, from 
the glorious Gospel of the Son of God." 

This, most certainly, would be the perfection of preach- 
ing the great doctrine of salvation through Jesus Christ. 
It was as certainly the method pursued by the earliest 
heralds of the cross. This, too, is the Wesleyan method. 
Creeds, confessions, articles, theories, and systems of opi- 
nion, have no prominence, if they even have a place, in 
this style of propagating the Christian character, in this 
mode of reducing the world into obedience to God. The 
advantage of it is, that it keeps constantly before the eye of 
the hearer what is considered by it as the essence of Christ- 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



397 



ianity ; no side issues are created by it ; no controversies can 
legitimately come out of it ; its force is maintained by its 
presenting but a single topic to the mind ; and the power of 
it is absolutely overwhelming when the living demonstration 
of the truth of our religion is known to assert only what he 
is admitted personally to possess. It does not, by making 
this personal experience of the preacher a necessary qualifi- 
tion, reject the assistance of other qualities. It rejects 
nothing which gives a man character and influence with his 
fellow-beings. It rejects not social position, nor family con- 
nections, nor the assistance of human learning. It would 
permit, nay, it would encourage the minister, to covet all of 
the best gifts within his reach. It would encourage him to 
be as profound as Aristotle, as learned as Salmasius, as 
eloquent as Cicero. It would encourage him to separate 
himself, like Solomon, and to seek and intermeddle with all 
vrisdom y for "knowledge," as the wise man had said before 
the days of Bacon, "increaseth strength;" but neither philo- 
sophy, nor literature, nor science, nor eloquence must be 
suffered to take the place of that personal experience of the 
power of God upon the heart, which constitutes the funda- 
mental qualification for the ministerial work. 

The difference between Mr. "Wesley and the religious 
organizations of his day, in respect to education, has been 
very decidedly misrepresented. The difference, truthfully 
stated, was simply this: that the contemporary establish- 
ments required learning and recommended piety in their 
ministers, while Mr. Wesley, on the contrary, required 
piety and recommended learning. Without learning, Mr. 
Wesley thought a man of real experience in religion might 
do a great deal of good in proclaiming the necessity, possi- 
bility^ and power of this experience ; for his testimony, 
uttered from a feeling heart and in tolerable diction, would 
have its weight with many persons ; but he also held that a 
clergyman of the deepest erudition and of the most marked 



398 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 



accomplishments, without a personal knowledge of religion, 
would be nearly worthless in the ministry, as his conduct in 
not having accepted of Christ in his own heart and life would 
operate as a constant contradiction to the appeals he might 
make to others. Mr. Wesley believed precisely as St. Paul 
had taught, that a minister might " understand all mysteries 
and all knowledge," and might " speak with the tongues of 
men and angels," but if he had not charity — that love to 
God and man which constitutes the substance of personal 
religion — he would be, so far as success in the great work of 
saving sinners is concerned, but "as sounding brass, or a 
tinkling cymbal." He therefore revived the apostolic prac- 
tice of employing only religious persons, whether learned or 
unlearned, in the propagation of religion ; he preferred men 
of cultivation, if they had also piety, insisting that all his 
associates should be industrious in the acquisition of know- 
ledge pertinent to their profession ; and some of these asso- 
ciates, as has been seen, became the profoundest scholars of 
their generation, while a large body of their successors have 
followed successfully in their footsteps; but, at the same 
time, there never has been a day, since the laying of the 
corner-stone of Methodism, that a person of the greatest 
eminence in every intellectual quality and accomplishment, 
though he were a Bacon in genius, a Bentley in erudition, 
and a Webster or Pitt in eloquence, would be received or 
licensed as a minister without giving satisfactory proof that 
he enjoyed that religion which he undertook to teach; and 
the result of this paramount respect to personal experience 
is to be seen in all quarters of the world.' 1 

4 It is admitted by every candid historian of Britain, that, at the appear- 
ance of Mr. Wesley, personal religion in the ministry was very generally 
disregarded ; and we have seen Mr. Wesley taxing the officers and 
students of Oxford with this want of piety in themselves and in the 
ecclesiastic order of their country ; while it is well known that a similar 
looseness prevailed throughout the, continents of Europe and America 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



399 



2. If, now, my render will look steadfastly for a few 
moments upon this idea of making personal religion the cen- 
tral principle of a denomination, and so much so that neither 
a member can be received, nor an officer elected, nor a min- 
ister employed, without proof of the existence of this piety 
being required and furnished, he will see how the same idea 
lays the basis of its ministerial system. It is known in the 
ecclesiastical world as the itinerant plan of propagating 
Christianity ; and its opposite is the plan of settling a minis- 
ter over a congregation for many years, or for life. These 
are the two modes of the ministerial work, and the only two 
which have divided the practice of the general Church of 

It prevailed, according to the confession of Dr. Cooke (Centuries, vol. i., 
pp. 208-228) even among the Puritans of New England. He gives the 
case of the settlement of the Rev. Obediah Parsons over the Congregational 
church in Lynn, Massachusetts, when it was known by some of the official 
members that he was under suspicion of adultery. "The suspicions," 
says Cooke, "as to Mr. Parsons' habits were then not unknown, for he 
had been dismissed from Gloucester by a council, which had acted on such 
suspicions ;" and this writer goes on to relate with what indecent levity 
the sin in question was referred to by some of the prominent members 
of his parish: "Some years ago," he says, "an aged member of this 
church, now dead (David Walker) informed me that, in his boyhood, he 
heard between two neighbors living in Market street a conversation to 
this effect: ' Are you going to get that Parsons to preach here?' 'Yes.' 
' Don't you know that he is an adulterer?' 'Yes; and that is one motive 
which I have in getting him /' " Even at an earlier period than the settle- 
ment of Mr. Parsons, as far back as 1720, "there had been," says Dr. 
Cooke, " an abatement of the original zeal of the Puritans, the tone of 
general religious life was depressed. And compared with the stricter 
morals that obtained in the first generation, when most of the people were 
Christians, and eminently such, there had been an alarming incursion of 
immorality." It was this immorality, this fall of Puritanism, that had 
prepared it for the reception of immoral ministers, provided they were 
only, like Mr. Parsons, men of good education. See Centuries, vol. i., 
pp. 17 8-1 79. I refer to Dr. Cooke because he is the acknowledged cham- 
pion of New England Congregationalism, and, therefore, a good witness 
against himself. 



400 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 



God on earth ; and it must be plain to the thinking man that 
these two modes grow directly out of their corresponding 
theories of preaching the Gospel, whether through the head 
to the heart, or through the heart to every other department 
of the man. If the work of preaching the Gospel implies, 
that the preacher has a system of opinions to inculcate and 
defend ; that he has a creed or a confession, consisting of a 
series of profoundly intellectual propositions in relation to 
the most recondite topics with which the human faculties 
have connection or intercourse to establish ; then there can 
be no doubt that he ought to be an established minister, liv- 
ing in the same place and ministering to the same people for 
a great length of time ; for, in that case, he is the teacher of 
a school, rather than a propagator of the Christian life ; and 
his enterprise will demand, not only the labor of a lifetime 
under the most favorable circumstances, but often require 
more and more opportunity as he seems to be approaching 
some reasonable termination of his labors. Confessions, 
creeds, opinions, are very debatable matters ; and the propa- 
gator of opinions will frequently discover that his most suc- 
cessful demonstrations are at once followed by a new set of 
popular doubts. The whole work is a work of time ; and it 
will not be expedient, as a general thing, to make frequent 
changes of the minister, lest the exact position of the pulpit 
suffer a change also with every successive occupant. The 
audience, which constitutes the popular party to the debate, 
would not fail to notice all such changes of clerical position ; 
they would notice the shades of difference between every 
argument advanced by one minister and the arguments of 
his predecessors ; if they had been met and mastered by one 
clergyman, the work would have to be done over again by 
the next one ; and, in the absence of the preceding minister, 
or ministers, they might cite his or their authority against 
the positions or arguments of any actual incumbent. The 
discussion, in fact, must be a lengthy and tangled one at 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS, 



401 



best, in cases where the ministerial side of it should be man- 
aged by the same man for a great many years together ; and 
it would be absolutely endless if carried on by a great 
variety of clergymen following each other at short intervals 
of time. Socrates spent many years in the work of establish- 
ing a system of opinions among his fellow-citizens at Athens; 
and he was followed in the labor by his disciple, Plato, who 
professed only to repeat the propositions, arguments and 
illustrations of his master ; but he did not live long enough, 
though his life was quite protracted, to see his master's sys- 
tem received to any great extent among his countrymen ; 
while the first emission of his own writings had scarcely 
obtained a general circulation, before the system he had 
adopted and defended had divided, even at Athens, into as 
many sects as it had raised up distinguished advocates. 
Could Socrates himself have remained, he might, I think, in 
the course of six or seven generations, have converted the 
greater part of his Athenian fellow-citizens capable of under- 
standing him, to his opinions, and thus established a sort of 
supremacy for his system : but a single life-time is a very 
short period, whether in the purely philosophical department 
of reasoning, or in that kind employed by theologians, which 
is partly philosophical and partly scriptural, for the settle- 
ment of any system of opinions, if such a system can ever be, 
indeed, entirely established. One thing is certain, however, 
beyond a question : that the theory of preaching which 
makes it necessary to inculcate a creed, rather than propa- 
gate a life, not only requires time, but requires the settled 
policy of a setted and long-abiding ministry. 

If, on the other hand, as I will now proceed to show, the 
leading work of the clerical profession is to state facts re- 
ceived, and to be received upon the authority of revelation, 
and to state and illustrate an inward life and character con- 
sistent with those facts, the work of a minister is a very rapid 
thing, permitting him, like the apostles in the spring-time of 



402 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY*. 

the church, to fly from city to city and from region to region, 
in the shortest possible time " setting the kingdoms in a 
blaze." He goes to propagate, not opinions, or systems of 
opinion, but personal religion. He has no subtile arguments 
to make ; he has none to refute ; he goes out to proclaim 
salvation from sin through " repentance toward God and 
faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." He goes into the 
world bearing fire ; his business is the setting of fires in the 
regions and countries where he moves ; and when any fire is 
set, he puts over it a watch, then flies elsewhere to start 
another, and so onward to the end of his career. When he 
sees, in any place, a pile well ignited, beyond the probability 
of going out or of being scattered by the enemy, he does not 
remain there to lecture and reason on the nature, qualities, 
offices, uses, and history of fire ; he does not tarry, in other 
words, to teach the philosophy of fire, how and why it acts 
as it does, or hoiv and why it came to be what it is, or how 
and why it came to be at all ; he permits everybody to make 
up his own opinions on all such sj^eculative questions ; and 
lie rushes forward in the single employment which he has 
undertaken to pursue. His ministerial brother of the other 
mode of preaching may go to a place and try to light up a 
conflagration by stating and defending a series of proposi- 
tions about fire ; for this is the general course adopted by 
him ; he, on the other hand, gathers up a heap of combustible 
materials and then at once, without the intervention of an 
argument, applies the spark. His brother, after having pro- 
duced a flame by the most inverted order of operations, by a 
slow and tortuous route, must fix himself to the spot to reason 
for a lifetime lest the community may not hold to precisely 
his notions, or the notions of his denomination, respecting 
fire in general, or respecting its relations to water and other 
bodies incombustible and combustible, and respecting every 
thing resembling it in nature but not exactly like it, as if 
correct opinions on such extraneous questions were of vital 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



403 



consequence in the enterprise undertaken by the ministry. 
He, however, in the time occupied by the other in discussing 
without settling such questions, has been the means of start- 
ing more revivals, than the other man has needless proposi- 
tions for discussion. The one is slow in work and stationary 
in his residence, because he undertakes to propagate religion 
through a system of opinions. The other flies over the world 
with the most rapid motion, and is equally quick in the pro- 
duction of results, because he propagates religion by propa- 
gating nothing else, leaving the religion of the people to lead 
them to correct opinions, rather than trying by the instru- 
mentality of opinions to spread religion. 

The man who goes into the world to propagate religion 
because he enjoys it in his own experience — who goes out, in 
a word, to propagate that experience itself — waits not for a 
call from any people, but goes because he feels that he is sent. 
The actual work of God upon the heart, which we now-a-days 
call religion, always carries this feeling with it. This con- 
viction of duty is accompanied also by a corresponding wil- 
lingness to go and labor in the cause of bringing souls to 
Christ. Every converted man feels the sacred impulse to go 
about among his acquaintances, and oftentimes to go beyond 
the circle in which he had moved before, to publish the joy 
of his own heart, and to invite all around him to accept the 
life that he is conscious of living by faith on the Son of God. 
The minister is one of these converted men, who feels this 
impulse so strongly, that he cannot consent to spend his time 
in any other business, but must give himself entirely to the 
work of proclaiming this heartfelt salvation to all whom he 
can prevail upon to listen to his voice. Not only his theory 
of preaching, therefore, but the conviction of his duty to 
preach at all, he owes to this inward experience of religion, 
whose essence, as we have seen, is universal love. He does 
not wait for the people to call him. He goes out and calls 
the people. The people might never call him ; they might 



4:04 METHODISM IX RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 



never feel their need of what be has to teach ; and this, in- 
deed, would always and everywhere be the ease. The Gospel 
came not into the world because it was asked for by the 
world. The very opposite was the order of events by which 
it came. God loved the world and so offered up his Son. 
The Son loved the world and gave himself to die without 
being asked to do it. He sent his apostles, his missionaries, 
his representatives, not because the different sections of the 
world demanded of him this assistance, but because he felt 
the impulse of saving a lost and ruined race. In the same 
way, these missionaries at first went forth, not by the invita- 
tion of the communities to which they went, but generally in 
spite of every species of objection and opposition to their 
enterprise, simply because they were constrained to follow 
the direction by sharing the impulse of that love, which, 
through their Master, aud at the moment of their new crea- 
tion, had descended to them from God himself. The entire 
system of salvation, in fact, instead of beginning with the 
people and going back toward God, takes its origin with 
God and then travels down and outward to the people. This 
is the radical idea of the economy of Christianity ; and this, 
as the reader well knows, is the radical idea of the economy 
of Methodism. St. Paul, and his fellow-apostles, not tarrying 
to be invited by the inhabitants of Judea and of the countries 
of the Gentiles, went forth over the Roman world, into every 
nation and province, and even to the remotest corners of the 
globe, because they had a spark of that love, which offered 
Jesus as the Redeemer and Saviour of the race before the 
race had found out its want. It was this same work of God 
upon the heart, and not the desires of the world's population, 
which, in the hour in which Methodism was born, sent Wes- 
ley all over Great Britain, and Coke to the British empire of 
the Indies, and AYhitefield to the hills and valleys of Xew 
England, when neither one of them knew an individual in 
the places to which they went who desired their coming. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



405 



It was this fundamental principle of action that thus, without 
being foreseen or planned, brought into existence the itiner- 
ant system of the ministerial work by which Methodism has 
been everywhere distinguished. It is the principle set forth 
by Christ, when he declares that he came into the world " to 
seek and to save that which was lost." He came not " to 
call the righteous," nor was he called by the righteous ; but 
his mission was to come and call " sinners to repentance ;" 
and this is the theory of the enterprise of evangelizing the 
race, which was adopted at the first, and which has ever 
since been carried out, by Methodism. The ascending 
Saviour had commanded his disciples to "go into all the 
world and preach the Gospel to every creature ;" and that 
" whether they would hear or forbear ;" in the same spirit 
Wesley, when asked by a scoffing priest of what parish he 
was rector, made the celebrated answer — " The world is my 
parish ;" and both he and his ministerial associates and suc- 
cessors have occupied that parish, not because the people 
of it petitioned them to do so, but because they were thus 
obeying, not only the order of the great plan of saving the 
fallen race^ but the religious impulse which constituted the 
invariable and paramount element of a genuine experience of 
the work of God upon the heart. When, by the proclama- 
tion of this experience, felt in their own hearts, and estab- 
lished by the word of God, a sufficient number have been 
awakened and converted in any place to constitute a class, a 
class is formed, and this, in its turn, becomes a church; these 
churches are then multiplied, by the same agency of the 
itinerating ministry, till there are enough for the formation 
of a conference ; and thus, beginning with the ministers, who 
feel impelled to preach by the love of God and man which 
makes up the sum of their experience, the wonderful move- 
ment called Methodism took its origin in the world, and has 
now become the greatest religious denomination of modern 
times. 



406 



METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 



Such being the economy of Methodism in relation to the 
propagation of Christianity, let us now contrast it for a 
moment with the order pursued by those who make opinions, 
a confession, a creed, the starting-point and center of their 
operations. The course taken is substantially identical in all 
the religious denominations which arose out of the Lutheran 
Reformation. As they all make the subscription to articles 
of faith the final and indispensable qualification to church 
membership, and, therefore, begin and carry forward their 
work everywhere by preaching to the head, rather than the 
heart, or to the heart through the head, so they all lay the 
foundation of every society they form on the basis of a creed. 
The mode pursued by them all, indeed, is about the same as 
that followed by the Congregationalists of New England ; 
and this mode is not only well known, but it has been laid 
down for the benefit of all concerned in printed publications. 
In the Congregational Year-Book, for example, for the year 
1858, the subjoined directions are given for the formation of 
new societies of that order : " Determine first," says this 
annual expositor of their system, " whether there are indi- 
viduals enough who would fellowship each other in doctrine 
and covenant to constitute a church. Secondly, whether there 
is, or is likely to be, a population from which, with the 
divine blessing, a self-sustaining and prosperous church can 
be gathered. Thirdly, whether there are no accommodations 
provided w T here satisfactory worship and Christian fellowship 
can now be enjoyed. These questions settled in the affirma- 
tive, let there be a meeting of those wishing a new organiza- 
tion, in which there shall be the fullest expression of feelings 
toward God in prayer, and toward one another in free con- 
versation in reference to the solemn undertaking; and let 
there be still another meeting, in which prayer and remarks 
shall intermingle, and the mind of the great Head of the 
Church be ascertained. When the way shall seem to be 
opened for another step, a moderator and a scribe should be 



THE SECOXD CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



407 



appointed, and a committee raised to prepare articles of faith, 
and a covenant, to be presented at an adjourned meeting. At 
the adjourned meeting, the articles of faith and the covenant 
being examined, and personally assented to, some such vote as 
the following seems at this time appropriate: ' Yoted, that we 
now form ourselves into a Congregational Church, and adopt 
the following articles of faith and covenant, in testimony of 
which we hereunto affix our names.' " The church being thus 
constituted, the next matter is to call a minister, the process of 
which calling is thus set forth : " The custom among Congre- 
gationalists, although somewhat various, generally favors the 
raising of a special committee, entitled the Committee for the 
Supply of the Pulpit. Although the church is the body most 
deeply interested, and to which, if to either exclusively, this 
business may with the greatest security be committed, yet, 
as the parish only is a corporate body, and the duties of this 
committee involve financial interests, it is common to intrust 
this service of supplying the pulpit to joint committees of the 
church and society, the former having the majority. Very 
much depends, more than is commonly appreciated, upon the 
character of this committee. Kits members have good com- 
mon sense, with a fair quota of ex])erience, they can avoid or 
even allay jealousies and party spirit ; but if they commit a 
few indiscretions, they will engender strife, from the blight- 
ing influence of which religion will suffer for years. There 
are three prominent courses which such committees pursue. 
One is to employ a great variety of preachers as ' supplies, 3 
and then call upon the church or society to decide which of 
these shall be requested to preach as a candidate, or be 
invited, it may be, to settle as pastor. But in the diversity 
of taste prvailing among the multitude, each, or at least 
several, of these ' supplies ' will gain votaries ; and thus the 
strife begins. Another course sometimes adopted by the 
committee is to select two or three candidates, and after they 
have, been heard for an equal length of time, refer the ques- 



408 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 

tion : To which of these shall a ' call ' be extended ? In this 
case, each candidate proves the favorite of some individuals. 
Parties are formed, and, as the number of parties is 
diminished, the contest increases in warmth, it may be, in 
virulence. One or the other of these courses specified is fre- 
quently, perhaps it may be said generally, pursued; but they 
are both attended with an incalculable amount of mischief. 
A third course is to form a rational estimate of what kind of 
a minister the church or society needs, and can reasonably 
expect to gain, and then make thorough inquiry of those who 
are acquainted with clergymen, and are capable of forming a 
judgment respecting them, for a suitable man — and some- 
times go and hear for themselves, as a committee, the indi- 
vidual recommended ; and not introduce into the pulpit any 
candidate until they find one whom they believe to be the 
right man ; and never introduce the second man, until it is 
settled that the first is not accejitable to the people. In this 
way, a pastor may be secured with great unanimity and 
with the happiest results." Such is the mode pursued by 
Congregationalism in the calling of its ministers ; the system 
is so cumbersome, so slow, so full of peril and trouble, that it 
is no wonder it has accomplished so little in the world ; but 
the confession of its evils is so direct, and so full, that the 
account here given of this system would seem to have been 
written and published by an enemy. Not so, however ; it is 
the account given of Congregationalism by itself; and the 
same publication which has furnished us with this exposition 
goes on still further to lay out the difficulties and disasters 
of this plan. Speaking of the question, whether the " call to 
settle" should be referred to the church, or to the parish, the 
Year-Book proceeds to say : " This point is more important 
than is often imagined. It has been the subject of much con- 
troversy in New England ; but now it is the fixed policy of 
Congregationalists to secure the reference of this question to 
the church first y thus giving to professed Christians the 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



409 



power of nomination. There is, sometimes, an unhappy and 
ruinous jealousy existing between a church and society. 
While the church should, properly, consult the preferences 
of a parish, so far as can consistently be done, that parish 
must be short-sighted and perverse, which does not so 
appreciate the dependence of the institutions of religion upon 
vital piety, as to be willing to give the precedence to the 
church in the selection of a pastor." The pastor having 
been, by this tedious and contentious process, selected, the 
next question regards the terms of his settlement, which con- 
stitutes another topic for differences and discussions : " If a 
pastor is settled unconditionally," continues the Year-Book, 
" or with no provision for the termination of the relation, it 
is regarded in the eye of the law as a settlement for life, and, 
as such, it cannot be disturbed, except by the mutual consent 
of the parties. This mode of settlement derives a sacredness 
from its associations with life as a whole, and fosters a state 
of feeling in pastor and people favorable to stability ; hut it 
involves an incidental evil. There have, sometimes, been 
found individual clergymen, whose ministrations are not 
acceptable to their people, and who really ought to yield 
their position, and yet refuse to do so • in such cases the 
church and society are greatly restrained by, if they are not 
held entirely subject to, the ivill of their pastor. To avoid 
such a contingency, the practice has frequently been adopted 
of incorporating into the terms of settlement the condition 
that either party may dissolve the relation, by giving six 
months' notice to that effect. This arrangement involves the 
evil of causing the relation to be viewed as a temporary 
matter. The facility with which it enables a, party to dismiss 
their pastor, furnishes a temptation to individuals to create 
parties, and exposes the society to hasty action. To avoid 
each of these extremes, there are parishes which have intro- 
duced into the terms of settlement the stipulation that, if the 
majority of the legal voters in the parish vote that they are 

18 



410 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY ! 

dissatisfied with their pastor, and give him their reasons in 
writing, and then, at the expiration of six months, vote again 
that they wish the pastoral relation to terminate, he shall 
then consider himself as discharged from his ministerial rela- 
tion, and from that time shall relinquish any further demand 
for services performed among them, and that, if he gives to 
the parish, in writing, reasons why he wishes the pastoral 
relation dissolved, and at the end of six months notifies them 
that those reasons are not removed, then he shall be at 
liberty to leave — the dissolution, in either case, being effected 
by and with the advice of an ecclesiastical council." These 
are certainly very cumbersome modes of settling and dismiss- 
ing ministers ; and it is particularly to be observed that each 
one of them involves almost the certainty of party spirit and 
ill feeling ; but the Year-Book proceeds to lay open another 
method of dissolving the pastoral relation, which, it would 
seem, must be frequently resorted to by impatient and 
unscrupulous members of a parish : " When a few individuals 
wish to have their minister leave, they sometimes meet at 
the house of some Diotrophes (see 3d Epistle of John, 9th 
verse), and, as a self-constituted committee, commission one 
of their number to visit their pastor, and inform him that, in 
their opinion, his usefulness with that church is at an end. 
Such a course tends, surely, to bring his usefulness to an end, 
and gives to a minority a dangerous power. If the reasons 
why individuals wish their pastor dismissed are not such that 
they are willing to state them publicly — if they are not such 
as will prevail with a majority of the church and society — 
then it behooves these individuals to cherish a quiet and sub- 
missive spirit, rather than act clandestinely, or form a clique." 
True enough ; but then these characters, being unconverted 
men, mere citizens of the parish, whom the Congregational 
system admits to a voting equality with church members, 
will not be quiet ; they will act together to compel the 
church to obtain such preaching as suits their taste and 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



411 



opinions ; a very small number of these ungodly men, indeed, 
can thus control the character and. labors of a church ; and 
there is, therefore, no reason why the writer of this expo- 
sition of Congregationalim should not exclaim, as he does, at 
the conclusion of his statement, against the common evil of 
being governed by the tyranny of such minorities : " Con- 
gregationalists," he says, italicizing every word of the decla- 
ration, " should have no occasion to pray for deliverance 
from the tyranny of minorities ; a?id the church should be 
rendered militant by her conflict with her foes, rather than 
her friends." There is evidently a world of meaning in this 
emphatic sentence ; the evil of having not only a church here 
and there, but all the churches of a large and respectable 
denomination, liable to be controlled by a very few of the 
unconverted members of their parishes, is certainly funda- 
mental and enormous ; but I see not how this evil, or any of 
the numerous troubles, difficulties and disasters so pitifully 
exposed by this Congregational authority, can be remedied, 
so long as this system of Congregational government and 
economy is continued. This writer imagines, as has been 
seen, that much embarrassment would be removed, if the 
denomination could reach the point of securing to its church 
members, in every case of the settlement of a pastor, " the 
power of nomination " — a very small favor, indeed, but one 
which, it seems, the Congregational churches do not now 
enjoy ; and the consequence is, that, either universally or 
generally, either actually or virtually, the power of nomina- 
tion, and the power of election, and the power of dismissal, 
lies with the members of the parish, who may be and nearly 
always are destitute of all personal religion. Not only is the 
whole system, according to the confession of its friends when 
thus talking among themselves, a heavy, slow, contradictious 
and quarrelsome system, from one end of it to the other, but 
the best results of it, according to this same authority, are 
to put the character of the minister and the character of his 



412 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY *. 



preaching into the hands of men, who, from the nature of the 
case, can care but little, if they care at all, for the propaga- 
tion of vital and scriptural Christianity. Really, whatever 
be the forms of action, they call their ministers ; they elect 
them ; they dismiss them ; they have the most to do, also, in 
supporting them, because they are always a majority of the 
parish ; and the tendency must be, that, if there is any minis- 
try laboring under the temptation " to meet the tastes of 
depraved minds " — " to preach what the enemies of the cross 
wish to hear " — " not to bring men up to religion, but to 
bring religion down to the depraved inclinations of men " — 
as Dr. Cooke has charged upon the ministry of Methodism — 
then, as it seems to me, it must be the clergy of a denomina- 
tion which is thus universally controlled by outside, uncon- 
verted, ungodly men. Such, most truly, must have ever 
been the result, had not the ministers of the denomination 
always been, as they are yet, a thousand times better than 
their system of propagating the word of God. 5 

This system of the Congregationalists, so exposed and 
lamented by themselves, was devised, as the well-informed 
reader must already know, as a retreat and a relief from the 
yet more complex and more troublesome system of the 
Church of England, which, in this respect, was but a copy 
of all the national establishments growing out of the 
Lutheran Reformation. They all, as has been shown, 
preached systems of opinion ; they all put these opinions in 
the place of personal religion by making them the test of 
church membership ; they all, by rejecting personal piety as 
the basis of their organizations, admitted the irreligious citi- 
zens of their parishes to positions of influence, to offices of 
power and trust, in their ecclesiastical governments ; they 
all committed, by adopting the plan of church preferments, 
by which a single worldly man may appoint the pastors to 

5 American Congregational Year-Book for 1858, pp. 43-48. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



413 



several churches, and by which nearly all the churches are* 
positively under the control of unconverted persons, the 
power of their respective bodies into the hands of men know- 
ing nothing of practical religion ; and the result liad always 
been, by the confession of all history, not only a rapid 
declension of real piety, but almost a total extinction of it, 
and a general irruption of a flood of popular immorality, in 
every country where this system had been established. It is 
no wonder that the Puritans, disgusted with what their eyes 
beheld all over Europe and among the Episcopal settlements 
of America, fled from this general corruption of original 
Christianity, and endeavored to revive the religion of Jesus 
and his apostles ; but they too soon fell into the fatal error 
of setting up human dogmas in the place of piety; they 
began to preach at men's intellects rather than their hearts ; 
they became so hot in their zeal for opinions as to compel 
mankind to subscribe to their creeds, even before they had 
convinced their judgments; they proceeded, very naturally, 
but most lamentably, to dispense altogether with personal 
religion, opening their churches to all members of their 
parishes, who would profess their articles of faith, and live 
with external decency; and they thus descended, from one 
step of degradation to another, throwing the whole power 
of their order into the hands of the ungodly, and thinking of 
nothing but the retention of their social and political position 
as a body, till they were roused from their death-like slum- 
ber, as by the trumpet of the arch-angel, at the coming into 
New-England of Whitefield, the apostle of Methodism, from 
which day they have been making the most manly strug- 
gles for a general revival among them of evangelical piety, 
in which they would long since have triumphantly succeeded 
had they not been cramped and confined by their unscrip- 
tural views of what constitutes the central idea of a church, 
by their unscriptural and irrational theory of preaching, and 
"by that unfortunate system of church government now so 



414 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 

openly and plaintively regretted by themselves. There is no 
truly pious man, no friend to our common Christianity, but 
must pity them for their distresses, and hope to see them 
rising out of these fundamental difficulties ; but, by striving 
to make themselyes the established order in this country, 
they brought opon them this overpowering influence of the 
unconverted ; they ranked themselves, by their own acts, 
with the corrupt and imbecile national establishments of 
other countries, which have so uniformly, from the days of 
Constantine to those of the first Edwards, fallen from cor- 
ruption into dissolution ; but as the reviving breath of true 
religion has been breathed upon them, as a proper and pros- 
perous example has been set them, as they still struggle with 
courage for a general restoration to the purity and efficiency 
of the apostolic period, it is to be hoped that they will ulti- 
mately succeed in becoming a great power among religious 
denominations ; and yet, there is no large encouragement 
for any church, which shall continue to make the assenting 
to a creed the leading test of membership, the inculcation of 
a creed the leading business of the ministry, and the fixing 
of the settled relations of the ministry and membershijD, the 
easy work of unregenerate, irreligious, worldly, and ambi- 
tious men, who happen to reside within the limits of its 
parishes. 

What a contrast there is between all this contention and 
trouble, this perpetual conflict of parishes with churches, 
in all the denominations which make oj)inions more import- 
ant than religion, which put creeds in the place of a genuine 
Christian life, and the beautiful harmony of that system of 
propagating Christianity which constitutes the organic exist- 
ence of universal Methodism ! The ministry of Methodism 
is not called but sent ; they go, not to discuss propositions, 
but to propagate religion ; and the world, which they have 
taken for their parish, lies out before them. To avoid run- 
ning over each other's field of labor, and have the necessary 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



415 



system in their operations, they come together once a year, 
in what is called an annual conference, and agree upon the 
places where they will severally preach the Gospel. This 
they take upon themselves to do, as well as to fix every 
other arrangement in relation to their one work of spreading 
religion among the people, not because the people have con- 
ferred upon them the privilege of doing so, but because it is 
the natural right of every man to go and do good where he 
pleases. It is the right of the whole body of an annual con- 
ference, therefore, to make its own arrangements for the 
prosecution of an enterprise, not given them by the citizens 
of the territory they occupy, but freely undertaken by them- 
selves. It is the right of all the annual conferences, also, to 
meet once in four years for the settlement of questions com- 
mon to their general work, either as entire bodies, or by 
delegations elected by themselves. It is nothing but the 
right of self-control, of self-government, of individual 
freedom, which every man has by nature, and which has 
been confirmed by the constitution and statutes of this coun- 
try. If the ministry retain the exercise of this natural right, 
without offering a share of it to any other persons, they 
oppress no one, they infringe no other person's rights, 
because the people to whom they go are as free to reject as 
to receive and listen to them. Nor does it concern anybody 
but the ministers themselves whether they agree to certain 
fields of labor, by mutual consent, or by the nominations 
rendered by a committee raised for this purpose by them- 
selves, or by the appointment of a single individual, called a 
bishop, who is nothing but a committee of one, nominated 
and elected by those whom he afterward appoints. In 
every case it amounts to neither more nor less than the 
right of the ministry to go and labor, after being sent of 
God, wherever or however they think his Providence may 
direct ; and the exercise of this plain and simple right is the 
essence of that itinerant system, which everybody has com- 



416 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 

plained of for its tyranny, except the only persons in ihl 
world who have the smallest right, or reason, or occasion, for 
finding fault. For if one man has the right to go and preach 
what and how and when and where he pleases, provided he 
believes himself called to preach at all, and to manage every 
thing connected with his work of preaching, then a hundred 
or a thousand men, or any number of associated conferences 
of men, have the same natural right. The people have no 
right to interfere with the exercise of this system of preach- 
ing. They have no right to complain of it. They have no 
right to demand an association with it, in its conference 
organizations, for no one of their rights is invaded by this 
arrangement, or system, among the preachers. The preacher 
is free to preach without asking the consent of the public. 
The public have the right to listen, or to close their ears ; 
and, by listening any number of years, they acquire no 
right of controlling the system of free preaching, which they 
did not at first possess. The relation, in a word, between 
preachers and people, at the beginning and always, is that 
of the most absolute freedom, of complete independence, on 
both sides. The one class preaches, and makes its own 
arrangements in respect to preaching, from the exercise of a 
natural and fundamental right. The other class listens, and 
supports this free ministry, with an equal freedom, and from 
the same natural and fundamental right. There is no cross- 
ing, or contradiction, or mixing of rights. These rights of 
the two classes cannot be mixed. The preachers are not 
hearers, and, therefore, cannot have the rights of hearers. 
The hearers, on the other hand, are not preachers, and can- 
not exercise the rights of preachers. The people, as an 
organized body of hearers, have not admitted the preachers 
to the rights of ordinary membership ; and what rights they 
originally had as members, they gave up and abandoned by 
becoming ministers. In the same way, the preachers have 
not admitted the people to the rights of ministers, and given 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



417 



them a seat and a vote in their annual and general confer- 
ences, which are nothing in the world but associations of 
preachers coming together to manage their own work of 
propagating the Gospel. They do, I admit, in their confer- 
ence transactions, frequently touch upon financial questions, 
which, according to the rights of the parties as heretofore 
stated, properly belong to the membership ; but it must be 
remembered distinctly, that all resolutions, all the doings, of 
these ministerial bodies, in relation to pecuniary matters, are 
nothing at all but recommendations to the people, which 
they, in the exercise of their fundamental rights, can treat 
with the most unrestricted freedom. It must be observed, 
however, that I speak only of rights, not of expediency, on 
the one side, as on the other. Nor can it be denied, that 
either party may, if it so chooses, invite the other party to 
any amount of participancy in its own prerogatives ; but 
neither party has the right to demand any mixing of these 
separate prerogatives whatsoever; the government of the 
whole body of ministers and members, which is based on the 
simple idea that the ministers have the right of preaching 
and the membership the right of hearing and supporting, is 
founded on the fundamental principles of individual and 
social liberty ; and to me it is thus far an insoluble problem, 
whatever may be my desire to see the two parties cooper- 
ating in all the enterprises of the denomination, in what way 
the people can admit the preachers, or the preachers admit 
the people, to the exercise of any part of their respective 
rights, without marring the symmetry of the system, with- 
out giving up, indeed, the central and controlling idea of 
organic Methodism, that the ministry are not called but sent 
to preach the Gospel. 

Hitherto, at all events, Methodism has been a system of 
free grace preached by a free ministry to a free people ; and 
its success, as it seems to me, should make us feel satisfied 
with it as an organization. Indeed, we have reason, I think, 

18* 



418 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 

to look upon it with admiration. It grew up just as the 
original system of propagating our religion grew up from 
the example of Jesus and his apostles. Jesus came into the 
world, not because he was called for, but because, as he says 
himself, his Father sent him. He then, in his turn, as he was 
about to leave the world, sent out his chosen ministry, their 
very name of apostles signifying that they were sent and not 
called to preach. These men, as in the case of Paul and 
Timothy, commissioned and sent out others, to supply places 
which they could not themselves occupy in person, and to 
represent and carry on the work, when the original ap- 
pointees of Christ should have followed him to another 
world. This, as every one knows, was the fundamental idea 
of the apostolic church. It is the fundamental idea of 
organic Methodism. The success attending it in both cases 
is the most remarkable event in the ecclesiastical history of 
ancient and of modern times. In the one case, it soon cov- 
ered the whole Roman empire, then including nearly all the 
civilized nations of the globe, with the triumphs of the Cross. 
In the other case, in a little more than an ordinary lifetime, 
it has accomplished more, it has received more members, 
than were received by the entire Church of God on earth 
during the first century of its existence. In the British 
empire, on which the sun never sets, it has become the 
second denomination in ecclesiastical, and the first in vitally 
religious, power. In France, where it has just buried its 
first missionary to that country, it has roused to a new life 
the slumbering Protestantism of the land, planted a con- 
ference upon the soil of the modern Caesars, set the fire and 
fanned the flames of a revival, which has spread over the 
imperial domain, and passed over the border into Switzer- 
land. In Germany, to which its first missionary was sent 
but about ten years ago, there is another conference of 
preachers, with a publishing-house for the production of 
tracts, books, and periodicals, and another revival now in the 



THF SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



419 



full blaze of progress, throwing its splendors far out over the 
moral darkness of that wonderfully intellectual country, and 
attracting the attention of the representative men, as well as 
of the multitude, of that fatherland of modern civilization. 
The islands of the coast of Europe, and some in the classic 
waters of the Mediterranean, have received the heralds of 
this Methodism, one of its missionaries now preaching on the 
very spot where was born the original Napoleon. Turkey, 
too, in Europe, in Asia, in Africa a leading power, has been 
compelled to open the Dardanelles to the reception of the 
Gospel ; and our evangelists have carried into it the word of 
God, penetrating into the interior of the barbaric empire, 
and raising among the provinces of the Danube, right along 
the old and. yet existing thoroughfare between the oriental 
and occidental worlds, the standard of the Cross. Bestow- 
ing its first labors upon those countries, which stand as 
centers of civilization to other countries, it has gone forth 
into British India, holding up the white flag of love to the 
warlike and divided populations of that fabulous land, and 
carried the ministrations of Methodism into the heart of the 
Flowery Kingdom, planting its standard upon the shores of 
the Yellow Sea. These foreign operations, however, have 
in no degree slackened the energy of Methodism in those 
two great countries, which have now, and are destined for 
many ages to possess, the control and government of the 
globe. Great Britain is alive with its activity, and its 
movements were never so marked and promising as they are 
now in the United States. This country it regards, in all its 
plans and enterprises, as the future center of the world. 
Here, according to the theory of its own undertaking, a new 
order of civilization, a new social power, surpassing all 
former example, is to be developed. This seems, at least to 
the leading minds of Methodism, to be the land foresha- 
dowed by the Roman prophet : 

" Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo." 



420 



METHODISM EST EEL ATI ON TO CHEISTTANTTY : 



It is here, therefore, that Methodism has poured out the 
most abundantly of its energies and labor ; and it is here, 
also, that its system has enjoyed its most wonderful success. 
Not only our native population, but the various and hetero- 
geneous populations coming to us, have been the objects of its 
care. German America, so far as it has yet been converted 
from European infidelity and formalism, has been mainly 
converted by the instrumentaHty of Methodism, and been 
gathered into her embrace. Norway has sent a large immi- 
gration into our country ; and this she has had the ability, 
under God, to receive into her inclosure. The papal addi- 
tions to this nation, from every land, which seem to with- 
stand every other influence, have very largely bowed before 
her altars, and entered into her communion. Methodism has 
more papal converts, I believe, than any other three denomi- 
nations in the United States. Nor is this the whole of its 
success. It has outstripped all other denominations in its 
services to the African portion of our population. Nor is 
this all ; for it is equally a fact that a larger proportion of the 
aboriginal inhabitants of our soil have been gathered into 
her pale than into every other denomination of the country. 
The truth is, her system of evangelization has, on every hand, 
accomplished marvels of success. Not only has it made a 
world-wide impression on the ungodly portion of the world's 
population ; it has roused the ecclesiastical bodies of Christ- 
endom to a new and better life ; it has modified the theology 
and revolutionized the customs of the churches of nearly 
every clime ; and the reader must admit that these results 
of Methodism must be attributed, very greatly, to the wis- 
dom and power of the system it has adopted of propagating 
the word of God. While other denominations, which adopt a 
theory the reverse of that of Methodism, have been waiting 
for the people to rise up, according to the plan sketched on a 
former page, and call for preachers to come to them, the 
ministers of Methodism have gone out into all the world 



TIIE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



421 



uninvited, into all the high places and low places, calling the 
people to come and follow them as they follow Christ. They 
have thus, and by no other means, performed their miracles 
of prosperity in every land. They have thus, and in no 
other way, achieved their miracles here on our native soil. 
They have thus been able, not only to map out and occupy 
the settled portions of the country, but also to anticipate the 
planting of every new settlement, and so causing the very 
wilderness to bud and blossom as the rose. They have thus 
been able to anticipate even the great events in the history 
of our great Republic, whose shadows they saw pointed 
westward in the morning of her day. They have even gone 
with the moving masses of our population and helped at the 
laying of the corner-stones of every new republic. Nay, 
they have been able to go before these masses. They were 
there, at the center of every new settlement, teaching the 
red man to look beyond his cloud-capped hills to heaven, 
when these populations began to move. Rapid as has been 
the march of our civilization in that direction, they were in 
the wildernesses of the West before it. Earlier than the rail- 
road, as tireless as its locomotives, they have not only tramped 
along in company with the westward-bound institutions of 
our nation, but have also gone on before, reaching the goals 
in time to turn round and shout their countrymen a welcome 
as they came. Their speed has been more than that of the 
race-course. They have outrun all events ; they have out- 
stripped the restless foot of avarice ; they have always been 
followed, never anticipated, by the scream of the steam- 
whistle ; and all over the wide-spread savannahs of the West, 
all over the golden Hesperia of our continent, the electric 
spark itself, too slow to keep them company, has ever gone 
flashing along behind them. It is their system, their itine- 
rancy, whatever may be said in behalf of their message as a 
recovery of the original ideal of Christianity, that has ren- 
dered possible such achievements. That very economy, 



422 



METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 



which has received the most criticism, and excited the most 
sympathy, on the part of those not comprehending the struc- 
ture of our system nor the philosophy of our success, has 
been the agency employed by the heartfelt experience of 
Scriptural Christianity in this great work of self-expansion, 
in the accomplishment of these grand results. The same 
system is adapted always and everywhere to bring forth 
equally abundant fruit. Often modified in its details to meet 
the changes and peculiarities of times and places, its flexi- 
bility will still continue ; it will yet undergo many and per- 
haps some desirable alterations ; but it will not fail, as long 
as Methodism remains Methodism, always to retain the 
central and controlling idea of a free ministry, who wait not 
for the world to call them to their work, but go whither 
they are sent of God ; and in this way, they have reason 
from their past experience, and from the growing momentum 
of their movement, to look for such a prosperity, in the 
electric age now dawning on them, as will repay them for all 
past labors and outdo all former fame ! 

3. If the reader will now again look, attentively and 
thoughtfully, upon that experimental piety, which has been 
set forth as the origin and center of Methodism, he will see 
that this personal experience of religion is not only the 
essence of its doctrine, and the creator of its system of pro- 
pagating the Gospel, but that it has also given form to its 
style of preaching. There are four ways in which orators 
address public assemblies. One way is to speak, without any 
preparation of thinking or of writing, whatever comes into 
the mind at the time of speaking ; another is to premeditate 
what is to be uttered, and how the utterance shall be made, 
before getting up to speak ; another is to write out whatever 
has been thus premeditated and then recite it from recollec- 
tion ; and the last is to write and then read from manuscript 
what has been thus prepared. 

These four ways of speaking were open to the first heralds 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



423 



of Methodism ; and it was within their ability to adopt either 
one of them ; nor can it be regarded as wonderful that, as a 
general thing, they began with the one first named, and have 
since mostly passed over into the second, with a few, here 
and there, who have gone through the third, and made their 
final landing at the bottom of the series; for this is the 
natural course of things when left to follow the universal 
tendency of human nature. 

When an individual is first brought into possession of a 
new and inspiring idea, or experience, which fills and ani- 
mates his heart, he burns to impart it to those around him ; 
and this would be particularly true at the reception of so 
satisfying and expansive an experience as that which we call 
personal religion ; for the recipient of this is not only full of 
spiritual exultation on his own behalf, but overflowing with 
the love of his race, and alive with a zeal to bring all men, as 
rapidly as possible (and he thinks the work can be very 
readily accomplished), into the same state of enjoyment that 
he feels himself. This is the common condition of all con- 
verted men ; it is the common condition of all pious clergy- 
men at the beginning of their career ; it is the common con- 
dition of every religious movement, while its first fervor 
remains in its native strength, uncooled and unabated by the 
natural decay of human passion ; and it is not to be wondered 
at, therefore, that the first impulse of a redeemed man, whe- 
ther a member or a minister, is to open his mouth without 
prior preparation, and pour out what must at once flow forth 
from the fullness of his heart. The joy he feels not only causes 
him to fly from person to person, and consequently from 
place to place, after the itinerant style of labor, but to give 
vent to his emotion and expression to his experience in such 
order of presentation, and in such diction, as are prompted 
at the moment by the impulse which he always carries in 
him. He utters, without knowing or caring how, what he 
feels within his heart, and what has taken possession of his 



424: METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY*. 



whole being, feeling at all times sufficiently prepared to 
declare what he knows by consciousness to be the substance 
of his own spiritual state ; and his impulse is so strong, his 
convictions are so forcible, his way before him is so clear, 
that he would as soon think of preparing himself, by preme- 
ditation or by writing, to bold a conversation on the most 
familiar topic, or to run and tell the people that their city 
was on fire, and that the conflagration might be stayed in the 
way he had proceeded in saving his own dwelling, as he 
would of premeditating or composing a discourse on the 
necessity, possibility, character, or consequences of practical 
religion. 

This first experience, however, maybe kept alive, and main- 
tained in something like its primal heat, by keeping the soul 
close to the seat and center of all spiritual life, or it may, as 
is too generally the case, gradually cool down, and work out 
its transition from an emotion to an idea, when it can no 
longer utter itself without the aid of premeditation, or the 
assistance of the pen. Just so far, indeed, as this experience 
passes over from a consciousness of what it is to a recollection 
of what it was, so far wall the soul require adventitious help 
in expressing it. The highest eloquence is that of nature, 
when the orator is so full of his theme, that his words, voice, 
modulation, action, all spontaneously spring up and go out of 
him, he knows not how, but with unerring certainty to their 
mark. Nature, when fully roused, is always the highest and 
truest art. Art, indeed, is nothing but an attempt to copy 
nature — to seem to be what nature is — an empty fabric 
erected after the pattern set by nature ; and it comes into 
existence and finds a place only when nature has lost some- 
thing of her warmth and power. It is scarcely to be expected 
of any man, however, whatever may have been the force of 
his first feeling in the reception of his new experience, that 
he should never for a moment, amidst the vicissitudes and 
fluctuations of ordinary life, feel cooler than at the hour of 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



425 



his original inspiration. Sickness, feebleness, derangement of 
bodily health in any degree, as well as the changes of the 
world around him, and the changes of the world toward him, 
will from time to time tend to subdue and modify his first- 
emotion. It is contrary to the very laws of our mental being, 
indeed, that a passion should long continue, without constant 
reexeitement, in its pristine strength ; and the religious man 
has therefore a more difficult task before him, to keep his 
first fervor at its highest intensity, than is likely, as a general 
rule, to be performed. Oratory, as a consequence, will drop 
from its loftiest pitch of absolute spontaneity to the grade 
below. Xot that it must do so ; but only that it does, in the 
common course of things ; and this next grade is that which 
admits of premeditation before speaking. 

There are but few persons at any one time living, in fact, 
capable of such an overwhelming passion, even when religion 
is the cause of it, as to raise them to this highest rank of 
oratory. Some of the earliest of the apostles were com- 
manded by their Master not to think beforehand what they 
should say when called upon to speak ; they were assured 
that both ideas and language adapted to their emergencies 
should be given them at the moment ; and yet, it is not 
certain, from the words of the command, that they were to 
have any other aid than what always comes to a speaker, 
who, like a prophet, feels himself filled to overflowing with 
the inspiration of his message. The old Hebrew prophets, 
indeed, always spoke from the immediate impulse they felt 
within them. So Peter spake on the day of Pentecost. 
There were examples of this sort of eloquence among the 
classic orators. It is said of Demosthenes, who generally 
wrote out and recited his discourses, that occasionally his 
feeliuo-s rose so high that he could not restrain himself lono- 
enough to write, and that, in the language of Eratosthenes, 
when speaking from this " supernatural impulse," he far sur- 
passed his written efforts. Cicero tells us also of several 



4:26 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY '. 



Roman orators, who never premeditated their speeches, 
because, as they maintained, premeditation cooled down too 
much the excitement which made them eloquent ; and it is 
well known, that the most forcible of the extant orations of 
Cicero himself was made from the spur of the occasion, when 
his emotions carried him far beyond his ordinary style and 
pitch of eloquence. Such cases have occurred in all countries 
and in all ages. They have occurred very frequently in 
English history. They have occurred in the history of our 
own country. There was Patrick Henry, who, the first time 
he ever appeared in court, having but little knowledge of 
any kind whatever, by a single speech made himself the first 
orator of Virginia, as he afterward became, by speaking 
wholly from his feelings, the most thrilling speaker of this 
continent. This style of oratory is possible, indeed, but it 
can never be very common among the speakers of any age, 
country, or class of people. It makes too high a demand 
upon human nature, and the practice of oratory will decline, 
not only in most persons, but in the progress of every move- 
ment, from this standard of absolute perfection, to the second, 
third, and lowest grades of eloquence, according to the ex- 
tent of this decay of feeling. 

He who possesses nearly this highest exaltation and 
strength of emotion will find it easy to speak in public by 
simply thinking out what he is to say, fixing in his mind the 
several points he. may have chosen to make, and selecting a 
few prominent illustrations, leaving the mind free to fall in 
with whatever may spontaneously arise either of language, 
argument, ornamentation, or address. He may cany this 
work of premeditation, however, to its utmost extent. He 
may make out his points, his arguments, his illustrations, and 
also the very language he is to use in speaking. He may 
carry it so far as to fix upon both the matter and the man- 
ner of his performance, even to the smallest particulars of 
delivery, such as his attitudes and gestures. Everything 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS, 



427 



can be done by thinking and recollection. Xo excellence is 
possible to oratory not attainable by this method ; for, while 
it fixes and renders certain the substance of the discourse, it 
leaves the soul at full play for any of those bursts of highest 
passion in which the sublirnest eloquence consists. How- 
ever difficult this method may be at first, practice and perse- 
verance will make it easy. The mind will soon learn, though 
not without great labor and frequent exercise, to invent what 
is to be said, to arrange what has been invented, to clothe 
the matter in proper language, to impress it all indelibly 
upon the memory, and then to deliver with suitable grace 
and energy, without committing one mark to paper. This 
was the method of Hortensius, the illustrious rival of Cicero, 
whose eloquence, as Cicero declares, was always of the 
highest order, and sometimes beyond any known example. 
It was the ordinary method of Cicero himself, who, though 
sometimes reciting what he had precomposed, and oftener 
speaking from rough notes held in his hand, delivered the 
greater part of his incomparable orations from this bare 
mental preparation. He informs us, too, that this was the 
common mode of the best orators of Rome, many of whom, 
like Sulpicius and Galba, were so impetuous in their passions, 
that they could never satisfy themselves by writing. 6 This 
has been the general method of the great majority of the 
renowned orators since the classic ages. It requires a large 
amount of genuine feeling, but admits the preexistence of 
any extent or profundity of thinking, of the most ample 
research, and of every possible means of intellectual, physical, 
and moral preparation ; and it has this advantage over the 
spontaneous method : that it is adapted to long trains of 
argument, to the most careful and precise forms of expres- 
sion, and to a calm and yet forcible and sustained delivery, 
while the other method is capable, as a general thing, of 



G Cicero's De Oratore, Lib. ii. cap. 88, and Brutus, cc. 24 and 55, 



428 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 

only sudden and brief though superhuman bursts of pas- 
sionate and overwhelming elocution, which, at moments of 
peculiar inspiration, are equally within the reach of this 
lower style of oratory. 

When a public speaker, on the other hand, becomes con- 
scious of a yet more considerable loss of original emotion, or 
of his never having possessed any great amount of feeling, he 
will descend still further in the scale, and write out what he 
proposes to deliver, practice the reading and reciting of it in 
private, and then commit it to memory for public recitation. 
This was the method of Demosthenes; but it was his method, 
not because of any known want of emotion, but because of an 
impediment in his voice, which, otherwise, he thought he 
could not conquer. Cicero tried the experiment of this mode 
frequently enough to demonstrate its inexpediency ; for he 
puts into the mouth of Antonius, one of the interlocutors in 
his immortal dialogue on eloquence, an open condemnation 
of this practice of writing and reciting : " Those who are 
studious of speaking," says he, " should embrace in their 
minds the subjects peculiar to the several departments of 
eloquence, arranged under general heads, as well as arrayed 
and adorned, I mean with thoughts and illustrations. These 
will, by their own force, beget words, which always seem to 
me to be elegant enough, if they are such that the subject 
seems to have suggested them. All that is required, whether 
it result from art, or observation, or practice, is but to know 
those parts of the field in which you may hunt for and trace 
out what you wish to find ; for when you have embraced in 
your thoughts the whole of any topic, if you are but well- 
j^racticed in the treatment of subjects, nothing will escape 
you, and every circumstance material to the question will 
occur and suggest itself to you." 7 The great orator every- 
where insists that, if the speaker has taken full possession of 



7 De Oratore, Lib. ii., c. 24. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



429 



his thoughts, his thoughts will give him the utmost copia 
verborum that his case may demand : " If the famous Anti- 
pater of Sidon," says he, " whom you, Catullus, very well 
remember, used to pour forth extempore hexameter and 
other verses, in various numbers and measures, and if prac- 
tice had so much power in a man of great ability and memory, 
that, whenever he turned his thoughts and inclinations upon 
verse, the words followed of course, how much more easily 
shall we attain this facility in oratory, when application and 
exercise are employed." 6 He goes so far as to say, very 
explicitly, that the emotion essential to a successful oration 
will almost certainly evaporate under the labor and toil of 
writing, and that, when once dissipated, the feeling that had 
arisen from the first mental survey of the subject of discourse 
can never be recalled : " An orator," says he, " may always 
be master of that discretion which will enable him both to 
speak and write in the same agreeable manner ; but no man 
can revive at pleasure the ardor of his passions ; and when 
that has once subsided, the fire and pathos of his language 
will be extinguished. This is the reason why the calm and 
easy spirit of Lselius seems still to breathe in his writings, 
while the vigor of Galba is utterly withered away." 9 

Cicero assigns as a reason, why the published speeches of 
the great orators of antiquity do not equal in eloquence the 
fame of their delivery, that " the most of them were written, 
not before they were spoken, but some time afterward," 
w T hich shows that those undying masters did not follow the 
practice, nor recommend the custom, of writing and recita- 
tion. He did, however, in his younger days, before he had 
acquired sufficient self-possession to face an audience without 
something more than a mental preparation, write out his 
more important addresses at the bar, though he did not com- 
mit and recite them : " I now began," he says, "for the first 



e De Oratore, Lib. iii., c. 50. 



9 Brutus, cap. 24. 



430 METHODISM EST RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 

time, to undertake the management of causes, both private 
and public ; not, as most did, with a view to learn my profes- 
sion, but to make a trial of the abilities which I had taken 
so much pains to acquire. I had then a second opportunity 
of attending the instructions of Molo, who came to Rome 
while Sylla was dictator, to solicit the payment of what was 
due to his countrymen for their services in the Mithridatic 
war. My defence of Sextus Roscius, which was the first 
cause I pleaded, met with such a favorable reception, that, 
from that moment, I was looked upon as an advocate of the 
first class, and equal to the greatest and most important 
causes ; and after this, I pleaded many others, which I pre- 
composed with all the care and accuracy of which I was 
master." 10 

He soon found, however, that the labor of precomposition 
was entirely inconsistent with any great frequency of speaking ; 
that it became more and more unnecessary as he acquired a 
greater self-possession ; and that, however desirable for a 
beginner, it was a constant fetter upon that free, and brilliant, 
and impassioned style of elocution, which marks every really 
great oration. 

It is well known to scholars that Plato wrote a book 
against the art of public speaking ; for his theory was, that a 
man of good natural abilities can utter, at any time, with 
sufficient accuracy and eloquence, anything which he really 
knows and feels, if he has given his subject the benefit of the 
proper forethought ; and Socrates, his master, and the master 
of all philosophers, laid it down as a maxim, that " all men 
are sufficiently eloquent in what they understand," thus inti- 
mating that the practice of laborious writing and committing 
to memory is entirely needless. The practice of committing 
and reciting, indeed, has been rejected by nearly every first 
class orator since the days of Demosthenes, who followed it, 



10 Brutus, c. 90. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



431 



as has been seen, from a physical necessity and not from 
choice. 1ST either in the Roman Forum, nor in the senate 
chambers of the free nations that rose up from the ruins of 
the Roman empire, nor in the parliaments and assemblies of 
modern nations, has there been more than an occasional 
instance of reciting speeches. ISTor would the practice be 
tolerated by the taste of modern times. Not only would a 
member of any of these deliberative assemblies, who should 
practice recitation, be literally run over and trodden down by 
those capable of speaking at a moment's warning, but his 
performance would be regarded as a school-boy declamation, 
unfit for the arena which derives its reputation and glory 
from the sudden encounters of men of such strong and earnest 
spirit, and such ready power, that they never can be found 
unprepared for action. What position could a reciter have 
maintained, in the British parliament, in the debates of Fox 
and Pitt that shook the world, or in those of our own country- 
men where Patrick Henry, and Fisher Ames, and John Adams 
stood always ready to answer, at a moment, the most labored 
of human compositions ? We have had the trial of some 
reciters in our halls of Congress. There was Preston, famed 
for the wonderful precision of his gesticulation ; there was 
Prentiss, equally noted for his finely-wrought fancies and 
easy action ; there was Mann, whose elaborate sentences, 
replete with every classic grace, gave him a brilliant reputa- 
tion for a day ; there was Everett, in whose speeches were to 
be found the most various learning and the most polished 
rhetoric ; but what could any one or all of these orators do, 
in an open and free debate, when Clay, or Webster, or Cal- 
houn, thought himself called upon to enter the lists, with his 
plain, strong, manly style of premeditative or extemporane- 
ous address ? They must all of them have felt abashed, while 
reciting their compositions in the presence of those, who, with- 
out lifting a pen, could demolish all such display of precom- 
posed rhetoric and looking-glass elocution at one manly stroke. 



432 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY '. 

However this may be, one thing is certain : that the prac- 
tice of recitation has not only not been recommended in the 
practice and precepts of the great orators of all ages but is 
contrary to the very genius of public speaking. The reciter 
stands up, it is true, before his audience ; he has no manu- 
script to confine his attention; he is free to move about 
according to the demands of the matter he delivers ; but if 
he recites, exclusively, everything he does is seen by every- 
one to be mechanical. His diction is not free and easy, but 
studied ; his tones of voice are not natural, but assumed and 
spurious; his attitudes and gestures spring not from his 
emotions, but are applied to the words pronounced with a 
barren and cold formality ; his eye, though open upon his 
audience, is not searching them as a lighted candle, and 
throwing out the blaze and heat of his present passion, but 
introverted, wholly engaged in reading a manuscript written 
upon his memory ; and the very best he can do, by the 
utmost of his exertions, is to give his hearers what they at 
once perceive to be, not a speech, but a declamation, which 
is nothing but a semblance of the reality of a genuine oration. 
It is the form of oratory without its life-giving spirit. 

Low and humiliating as this style of public speaking is, 
however, it is certainly a step higher than the last and 
lowest method of writing and reading addresses to the pub- 
lic. The mere reciter, if he has lost or abandoned the genius 
of all true oratory, has at least the merit of wishing to ap- 
pear to have it, while the reader gives up all claim to oral 
eloquence whatsoever, and contents himself with the reputa- 
tion and business of a public reader. His method is against 
the example and- precept of all the great orators of every age 
and country. In all ages there have been many who took 
pains to write, and sometimes to precompose their speeches, 
but only here and there a man, who ventured to read his 
composition, in a deliberative body, in the place of speaking. 
There is no case of reading mentioned in the history of 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 433 

Greek and Roman eloquence ; there is not a case in any 
country till after the beginning of the Dark Ages ; only a 
few cases have been known at the bar and in the senates of 
modern nations ; and these, like that of Burke in the British 
Parliament, never had the influence to change the custom of 
any nation. Burke, it is true, did read his speeches in the 
House of Commons ; and those speeches are acknowledged 
to be paragons of the elevated and dignified style of English 
composition ; but, as speeches, they are equally well known 
to have fallen as harmless to the floor as would have fallen 
the reading of as many pages from the then irrelevant ora- 
tions of Isocrates or Lysias. Webster, in the course of a 
long career of senatorial labor, read a single speech before 
the Senate of the United States ; and the very object he had 
in view, in this solitary exception to his life, was to avoid 
that free play of emotion and style, in which all genuine 
oratory is found. Senator Hill, of New Hampshire, was the 
only member of the American Senate, since its organization, 
who made it his habit to read all his speeches to that body ; 
and it is well to remember, that, though a gentleman of 
more than ordinary ability, a correct, strong, nervous, ener- 
getic writer, and a good reader, he generally had the satis- 
faction of reading to a temporary occupant of the chair, and 
to such secretaries and reporters as could not consistently 
leave, even for an hour or two, their posts of labor. 
Reading, in a word, has never been the mode of the senate, or 
the bar, or of any class of deliberative assemblies, since the 
world began; it has been found to be altogether too stiff, too 
foreign, too dead and formal for any live proceeding or enter- 
prise of living and earnest worldly actors ; it cannot adapt 
itself to the emergencies of any great occasion ; it can take 
no advantage of unexpected occurrences, or circumstances, 
but must go right along on its iron track, even if it is seen at 
the moment (but too late for correction) to be running over 
and crushing the dearest interest it has before it ; it confines 

19 



434 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 



the eye, the hands, the whole person to one spot ; making all 
free and commanding attitudes, all powerful and yet graceful 
action, all easy, natural, conversational articulation, positively 
impossible. When the eye should be searching out the elfect 
of every word and syllable, and catching fire from the re- 
flected passion of the audience, it is fixed to the manuscript 
lying under the reader's chin ; when the hand should be deal- 
ing out thought and feeling, at one time winning assent by 
its gentle movements, then driving conviction to the heart by 
its resistless force, it is turning over leaves or keeping place 
upon the paper ; when the foot should be holding the form 
of the speaker in a beautiful, or dignified, or sublime posi- 
tion, according to the shifting sentiments of the address, 
ready to advance or recede with an unerring obedience to 
the successive requirements of the occasion, or perhaps to 
throw a stamp upon the platform that shall startle and yet 
subdue every listener, it is idly hung up behind the other, or 
crossed over before it, or dangled down by the side of it, 
because a reader has no occupation for it; and when the 
voice, beginning like one in dignified but easy conversation, 
and gradually rising, sinking, and swelling in the compass 
and strength of its volume, should be now soft and gentle as 
a flute, now clear and piercing as a bugle, now running up 
and down upon every note of the plaintive, pleading, minor 
scale, now waning from the tones of a trumpet to the 
sweet and softly expiring cadence of a well executed diminu- 
endo in music, and all the while natural and perfectly 
adapted to its varying work by the guidance of what it feels 
and sees, it begins, progresses and closes in one perpetual, 
unvarying, and tiresome monotony of reading. There is no 
oratory in this mode of addressing a public body. It is said, 
I know, that the reader must learn to read as if he were 
speaking ; but it would be just as sensible to tell a man that 
he must learn to ride on horseback as if he were himself 
walking. The two things are entirely different ; our cou- 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



435 



sciousness makes them different the moment we change from 
one to the other ; and an audience will feel, in an instant, 
whenever a speaker, in the midst of his delivery, reads the 
smallest scrap of manuscript, even if they do not see it. His 
tone of voice at once changes ; and it would be the same, did 
he recite the scrap from recollection. When nature makes a 
difference, and especially a contradiction, it is impossible for 
art to overcome it ; and every effort to overcome, or to con- 
ceal, will reveal the deception in the voice and action. 
Reading cannot be transformed to speaking ; it never can be 
made to have the effect of speaking : it has been always and 
everywhere rejected, through the entire history of oratory, 
in all deliberative bodies, as a substitute for speaking ; and it 
entered the pulpit merely because the ministers of Jesus had 
lost the power of a heartfelt experience, which, while alive 
and burning for utterance, spurned the restraints and fetters 
of a manuscript. 

There are large, enlightened, and religious denominations, 
I admit, which follow the practice of reading sermons ; their 
ministers must write and read whatever they say in public ; 
but this was not their original custom ; it became their cus- 
tom only after the first fervor of their enterprises had passed 
away. Not only the first apostles, but the great reformers 
of every age, were speakers and not readers. The original 
propagators and defenders of the German, Helvetic, French, 
English, and every other branch of the Lutheran Reforma- 
tion, were speakers and not readers. The Independents of 
Great Britain, and the Puritans of England and of America, 
were at the first speakers and not readers. And nearly 
everything they have all accomplished, in the propagation 
of Christianity, was accomplished, let it be distinctly recol- 
lected, while their preachers were speakers and not readers. 
The same is true of the Baptist denomination, which, in this 
country, has done more in the great work of saving the race 
than any other, excepting only the one forming the main 



4zo6 METHODISM IX PcELATIOX TO CHEISTIAXTTY I 



topic of this volume. Its old preachers, the founders and 
fathers of its cause, never used a manuscript. It is only its 
modem representatives, who now stand up to enjoy the suc- 
cess of former conflicts, that make use of a support which 
the fire and energy of their predecessors rendered needless. 
But I will not use my own words in dealing with these two 
classes of ministers of a sister denomination. I will employ 
those of the leading Bajjtist divine of this country ; and I 
ask the special attention of sermon readers to the two pic- 
tures drawn out in the following quotations : 

"Let us picture to ourselves," says Dr. "Wayland, the 
authority referred to, " a young man of hinited education 
and retired pursuits, who would hardly dare to open his lips 
in mixed society, impressed with the conviction that it is his 
duty to preach Christ. He must stand up without any aid 
from writing, and deliver a discourse to a mixed assembly. 
The pecuniary sacrifice which he must make is nothing in his 
eyes — this he has willingly made ; but how shall he occupy 
the attention of an audience ? He has no accumulated trea- 
sures of reading or study on which he can rely. He has 
read little except his Bible, but he has been in the habit of 
studying that carefully and prayerfully. He knows that 
there will be before him men older, wiser, and better edu- 
cated than himself. The danger of breaking down, and 
retiring in utter confusion from the great assembly, the fear 
of losing his recollections of what he had mentally prepared, 
the conscientious dread of so stating the truth that souls 
may be lost through his imperfection, and the fear lest he 
should offend God by his fear of man that bringeth a snare, 
all fill him with apprehension. He looks to man for aid, but 
from this source no help comes. He looks to God, and hears 
the command repeated, 'Son of man, preach the preaching 
that I bid thee.' He turns his thoughts inward, and the voice 
utters : ' T\~oe is me if I preach not the Gospel.' In an agony 
he resorts to prayer, he can find no refuge but in the promises 



% 

THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 437 

of God. Christ has said, ' Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the Gospel to every creature, and lo, I am with you 
always.' He begins to take courage, but his faith is only a 
bruised reed. He wrestles with God for help from on high. 
His faith gains strength by the effort. Another promise 
serves as a cordial to his soul. One after another, every 
earthly trust is abandoned, and he is at last enabled to cast 
himself wholly on the promised aid of the Holy Spirit. 
Trembling, hoping, fearing, he goes forth to meet the people. 
His knees smite one against another, as he ascends the pulpit 
stairs. In a voice scarcely audible, he calls upon God for his 
blessing upon the congregation. He commences his sermon. 
His own voice seems strange to him. Gradually he forgets 
himself, and loses his fears. As a prophet from God he deli- 
vers his message. The powers of his mind begin to react. 
He is transported beyond himself. He would that the whole 
world were present to hear the story of redeeming love. 
He pours out his soul in earnest entreaty. He warns the 
ungodly, as though he and they were already in view of the 
judgment-seat. Words, burning and impassioned, come 
unbidden to his bursting heart. The time will not allow 
him to say half that fills his soul. He sits down, and thanks 
God for fulfilling his promise, but fears that it can never be 
thus with him again. When he attempts to preach again, 
the same conflict is renewed, until, in preaching, this becomes 
the habit of his soul. This is the school in which our older 
preachers were nurtured, and it is difficult to imagine a 
better school for the cultivation of pulpit eloquence." 

Nor is there, indeed, a more scriptural, natural, or effectual 
way of propagating the practical experience of our religion. 
But let us now look upon this author's picture of the charac- 
ter and behavior of the modern sermon-readers : 

" A young man, just in opening youth, is converted. He 
feels a desire to become a minister of the Gospel. He is 
encouraged by his friends to pursue a course of preparatory 





438 METHODISM EST RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 

study. He devotes several years to secular learning. He 
learns in college, to write on any subject of science or litera- 
ture. He pursues the study of theology. He learns to 
write on a sacred theme. He prepares, thoughtfully, a writ- 
ten discourse. He writes it over and over again, and it 
receives the last criticism of his instructors. It is in accu- 
rate and elegant English, and ' fit to preach before any con- 
gregation.' He has asked for a blessing of God in writing 
it. He does the same before delivering it. He takes it in 
his pocket, and reads it before an assembly. He is at first 
a little fluttered at the novelty of his position, but he has no 
fear of failure, for he knows the sermon to be perfectly accu- 
rate in doctrine and expression. Where is there here the 
room for burning enthusiasm, for that power which trans- 
ports men? No one can move others without being deeply 
moved himself. It is in this earnest and deep-felt trust in 
God that the power of the old ministers consisted." 11 

Sermon readers, however, adhere to this custom with a 
strange tenacity ; and their practice is sometimes defended, 
in the face of all classic example and instruction, and against 
the united voice of the great orators and all the great 
teachers of oratory of every age and clime. In the Congre- 
gational Year-Book for 1858, for instance, the Rev. Dr. 
Shepard, professor in the Theological Seminary of Bangor, 
a strong and worthy man, makes a vigorous defence of ser- 
mon-writing, leveling a sturdy blow, at the same time, against 
the extemporaneous method of address : " In the light of our 
history," says he, " we pronounce the clamor, raised in some 
quarters against all writing for the pulpit, a miserably shal- 
low and senseless clamor. The pulpit cannot maintain its 
molding efficacy, its ruling position, unless the men thereof 
are men of the sturdy pen as well as the nimble tongue. 
People, take them as they rise, are greatly given to be lazy ; 



11 Wayland's Principles and Practices of Baptists, pp. 25-26. 



THE SECOND CAT7SE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



439 



hard thinking is hard work ; and lazy men won't do it, if 
they can help it. Let the mere off-hand be the mode and the 
law, and we shall have it — mere flippant, off-hand, shallow, 
extemporaneous dribble. It will answer for exhortation, but 
not for doctrine, for correction, for instruction in righteous- 
ness. The thin liquid flow will do for babes ; but it will not 
support the stomachs of men." 

This, without dispute, is a very emphatic decision of a con- 
troverted subject ; and though not saying so in words, it 
was evidently intended, not only to cast reproach upon the 
practice of speaking without manuscript, but to bolster up 
the evil custom of reading sermons. As to writing, there 
is no controversy ; though purely extemporaneous speakers 
do not write what they utter, they may consistently write 
much by way of improving their style of speaking, according 
to the advice of all the great teachers of elocution; and 
those who make all their speeches by premeditation only, 
like Robert Hall, may, with him, write so incessantly and 
carefully as to be able to speak, without a scrap of manu- 
script, with the accuracy and elegance of an elaborate com- 
position. Xothing, indeed, can be said against writing. It 
has been well said by Cicero, in fact, that " the most consum- 
mate teacher of eloquence is the pen." A finished diction 
can scarcely be acquired without great diligence and care in 
writing. It was by daily and laborious exercises of the pen 
that Cicero obtained a final superiority over Hortensius, 
who, in the latter years of his life, neglected his mental pre- 
parations for the bar, and spoke very frequently without 
much labor of premeditation. He tells us, in his treatise 
concerning oratory, that, to be an orator, a man " must have 
a well-cultivated genius, like a field not once ploughed only, 
but again and again, with renewed and repeated tillage, that 
it may produce better and larger crops ; and the cultivation 
here required is experience, attentive hearing of other ora- 



440 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY '. 



tors, reading, and toriting. 12 Touching upon the imitation 
of the great masters of classic Greece, such as Demosthenes, 
Hyperides, ^schines, and Lycurgus, he declares that all 
real progress in the acquisition of a finished style includes 
among its needful exercises a habit of patient composition : 
" Whoever shall seek to obtain such resemblance," he says, 
" let him endeavor to acquire it by frequent and laborious 
exercise, and especially by composition; and if our friend 
Sulpicius would practice this, his language would be more 
compact ; for there is now in it at times, as farmers say of 
their corn when in the blade, amidst the greatest fertility, a 
sort of luxuriance which ought to be, as it were, eaten down 
by the use of the pen." 13 To beginners, who are intent on 
the formation of a good off-hand style, he gives the advice 
to write as much as possible : " Writing is said to be the 
best and most excellent modeler and teacher of oratory; 
and not without reason; for if what is meditated and con- 
sidered easily surpasses sudden and extemporary speech" — 
this is true excepting where there is deep and overwhelming 
passion — "a constant and diligent habit of writing will 
surely be of more effect than meditation and consideration 
itself; since all the arguments relating to the subject on 
which we write, whether they are suggested by art or by a 
certain power of genius and understanding, will present them- 
selves and occur to us, while we examine and contemplate it 
in the full light of our intellect ; and all the thoughts and 

12 De Oratore, Lib. ii. c. 30. 

13 De Oratore, Lib. ii. c. 23. This "eating down" of a too luxuriant 
diction by writing, reminds a classical scholar of what Virgil (Georg. i. 
114) says about subduing a crop by feeding it ; and Pliny (i. 18,) has a 
paragraph upon the same topic : " Luxuries segetum castigatur dente peco- 
ris, in herba duntaxat, et depastag quideni vel saepius nullam in spica inju- 
riam sentiunt : Ita juvenilis ubertas et luxuries orationis stylo et assidui- 
tate scribendi quasi absumitur et reprimitur. Pliny was himself an orator, 
as well as scholar, and knew the value of this assiduitas scribendi 1" 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. Ml 

words, which are the most expressive of their kind, must of 
necessity come under and submit to the keenness of our judg- 
ment while writing ; and a fair arrangement and collocation 
of the words is effected by writing, in a certain rhythm and 
measure, not poetical but oratorical. Such are the qualities 
which bring applause and admiration to good orators ; nor 
will any man ever attain them, unless after long and great 
practice in writing, however resolutely he may have exer- 
cised himself in extemporary speeches ; and he who comes 
to speak, after practice in writing, brings this advantage 
with him, that though he speak at the call of the moment, 
yet what he has to say will bear a certain resemblance to 
something written." 14 N~o teacher of oratory, indeed, insists 
more earnestly on a diligent use of the pen than Cicero ; and 
I have here quoted his strongest passage upon the subject ; 
it is the strongest passage of its kind in the entire circle of 
classic authors ; and yet, let it be carefully observed, while 
great emphasis is employed in recommending to learners of 
eloquence the value of composition as an exercise in the 
acquisition of a perfect style, there is not one word uttered 
here, nor anywhere else in the pages of Cicero, nor in any 
extant Greek or Roman classic, as I think I can affirm from 
personal examination, in favor of even a boy's reading his 
speeches to his tutors, and much less in favor of an orator 's 
reading a written oration to the public. 

The first and profoundest of the classic writers upon 
oratory, as the learned well know, was the great Attic philo- 
sopher, Aristotle. He not only wrote a work on rhetoric, 
which, with the ancients, always included oratory, but he 
repeated its elementary principles in another treatise com- 
posed expressly for the instruction of his royal pupil, Alex- 
ander the Great ; and I think I am prepared to say, that, in 



14 De Oratore, Lib. i. c. 33. 
19* 



442 - METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 

neither of these productions, though both of them profess to 
contain everything essential to an orator, and botli of which 
were the product of the most critical and exhaustive thinker 
of the most oratorical era of the most eloquent nation of the 
world, can there be found a syllable in favor of reading, I 
will not say a sermon, but anything in the nature of a speech, 
as sermons are now read by the ministers of existing sermon- 
reading denominations. On the contrary, the very frame- 
work of the oratorical art, as laid down by him, entirely and 
emphatically excludes the practice. 

The next great authority, in the order of time, is Cicero, 
who has been found to say everything that can be said on 
the side of writing as an oratorical exercise, but not a word for 
the practice of putting reading in the place of speaking. 
Cicero bases his three works on oratory on the system 
written out by Aristotle, who had declared that nature alone 
is the foundation of all eloquence, and that nothing but the 
trimming of nature is to be brought about by art ; and this art 
of speaking he had divided off into the five cardinal parts of 
invention, disposition, elocution, memory, and pronunciation. 
This classification Cicero adopted, giving the credit of it to 
Aristotle in the most explicit manner : " Quasi materia," 
says he, in his first book on Invention, " quidem nobis rheto- 
rics videtur ea, quam Aristoteli visam esse diximus, partes 
autem haa, quas plerique dixerunt, inventio, dispositio, 
elocutio, memoria, pronuntiatio." And now let the reader 
note, that this great master, like his illustrious predecessor, 
not only makes the cultivation of the memory a necessary 
exercise to every orator, but sets down the use of the memory 
as one of the five fundamental operations of the orator's mind 
in every effort of his art. The reading of speeches, therefore, 
if I may put such contradictory terms together, is thus 
entirely excluded by the very frame-work of oratory as fur- 
nished by Cicero, as well as by Aristotle ; and this emphatic 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



U3 



appeal to the general opinion and practice of antiquity— quas 
plerique dixerunt— shows that his system had prevailed from 
the days of Aristotle to his own. 15 

Next to Cicero, in the order of time, Quintilian holds 
among classic authors the place of universal teacher of 
oratory ; his authority has always stood by the side of that 
of Cicero and Aristotle ; as a systematic teacher, indeed, he 
stands far above them ; and yet , he, in his turn, makes the 
same general division of his art that they had made before 
him. He lays the greatest stress on the possession of a 
retentive and ready memory: 44 The memory," says he, 
"being an Indispensable property of an orator, is chiefly 
strengthened and nourished by practice.'''' But this could 
hardly be the correct value of this faculty, if an orator were 
allowed to write out and read his discourses. Memory would 
then be the least important of the five cardinal parts of ora- 
tory. But we are not left to inferences as to the meaning of 
this writer. He makes the emphatic statement that speaking 
ought to be learned, not only before composition, but in 
order to the formation of a good style of writing : " In order 
to write well," says he, " we are supposed to speak well 
and he sustains his position by reference to the ancient pro- 
fessors of his art. He lays it down as a maxim, that, if an 
orator will only be careful of his ideas, he will never lack for 
the means of expressing them, even if he does not write; 
and, in support of this position, he quotes with marked 
approval the well known verse of Horace — 

" Vcrbaque provisam rem non invita sequuntur" — 

that words always run willingly to the call of thought. In 

15 This five-fold division of oratory, made by Cicero in his juvenile 
performance on Invention, he maintained through every period of his life ; 
and the reader may find it referred to in the following places of his 
maturest works : De Oratore, Lib. i. c. 31, and in c. 42 ; Lib. ii. c. 19 ; and 
in his Brutus, c. 6. 



444 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY. 

another place, he gives a formal description of the art of 
public speaking according to the practice of the great orators, 
and according to the principles of his work : 44 Are we not 
speaking one thing," says he, " while we are thinking upon 
what we are to say next ; are we not, at one and the same 
time, obliged to supply invention with matter, words with 
propriety, and action with gracefulness, and all the while be 
attentive to our pronunciation, to our looks, and to our 
gestures ?" True enough, that, as every one knows, is the 
work of a public speaker, but not of a public reader ; and 
this classic author could have drawn no such portrayal of the 
act of speaking, had it been the habit of the best Roman 
orators, or agreeable to what he considered oratory, to read 
a discourse in public. Indeed, he goes so fir in another 
place as to ridicule the small pretenders to oratory in his day, 
who, as in our own, are so finical about their diction, that 
they can never appear before an audience without having 
written out their ideas, in the secrecy of their closets, and 
with a great straining after something remarkable in diction : 
44 You may see such men," he says, 44 without any rational 
plan of thinking, for several days together, with their eyes 
fixed npon the ceiling, waiting till some bright thought shall 
dart itself into their brains, or, roused by the muttering noise 
they make, as by a trumpet, twist their bodies into a thousand 
shapes, not in pronouncing, but in hunting after, words." 
Quintilian everywhere insists, that a public speaker has only 
to fit himself for his profession by a wide range of study and 
a rigid discipline, to be ready, without the need of writing, 
for any occasion which may happen ; and the substance of 
his great work is, that, after having educated himself fully 
and thoroughly in the science and art of speaking, an orator 
has little to do, in any given case, but to be careful of Ms 
matter, maintaining that the most proper language and man- 
ner of speaking will always rise spontaneously to give 
expression to his thoughts ; 44 The whole labor of modern 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



445 



orators," he says, just as if he were describing the sermon- 
readers of our day, " is employed in hunting after single 
words, and, after they catch them, in weighing and measuring 
their meaning. Supposing they were always sure of employ- 
ing only the best expressions, yet a curse upon their success, 
when purchased by doubts and delays, that cripple the career 
of eloquence, and damp the warmth of the imagination. 
Wretched and I may say poor must that orator be, who can- 
not afford to lose a single word without repining. But he 
cannot lose it, if he is well-grounded in the principles of elo- 
quence ; for application to well-chosen books will furnish 
him with a large stock of words, and instruct him in the art 
of placing them properly ; and these advantages will be so 
improved by daily practice, that he never can be at a loss 
either to find or to apply them." 16 

This, as every one will see, condemns and annihilates the 
writing and reading method. The doctrine of it is, that a 
speaker must first learn the elements of oratory, and disci- 
pline soul and body to meet its requirements ; he must then 
furnish his memory with a copious supply of language by 
making himself familiar with the authors of the most perfect 
diction ; then he is to take up his case, whatever it be, and 
master its points ; and then throw himself into the act of 
speaking with the fullest confidence that he will not suffer for 
the material and manner of expression : " To an orator," he 
says, " who follows this method, things and expressions will 
present themselves at the same time ; but to this purpose, 
he must be fitted by education. He must have earned, and, 
as it were, stored up the means of speaking. All the trouble 
of examining, judging, and comparing, must be over, before 
we come to the bar. An orator who does not lay a founda- 
tion in study, like a man who has no substance in reserve, is 
perpetually at a loss how to proceed. If an orator is pre- 



Institutes, Lib. viii. Introd. 



446 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 

pared with the requisites of speaking, every icord will, with- 
out being called for, hnow its duty, and be as obsequious to 
his meaning as the shadow is to the substance." 17 

It is in strict compliance with the mode of speaking taught 
by this paramount authority among the Roman classics, that, 
walking in the footsteps of Cicero and Aristotle, as well as of 
all antiquity, he sums up the contents of his immortal work 
in the following language : " Now, with many and great 
authors, I divide the whole system of speaking into five parts : 
I mean invention, disposition, elocution, memory, and deli- 
very, or, what is the same thing, action. Every speech, ex- 
pressing any certain purpose, must necessarily consist of 
matter and words; if it is short, and closes with a single pro- 
position, it perhaps requires nothing else ; but if it runs into 
any length, it requires more ; for perhaps it is not only mate- 
rial to speak to the purpose, and with propriety, but to know 
where to introduce what you have to say, thus giving rise to 
disposition or arrangement. But we shall neither be able to 
speak all that our subject will admit of, nor yet to introduce 
everything we have to say in its proper place, without the 
assistance of memory, which, for that reason, forms the 
fourth part. All those four parts, however, may be vitiated, 
nay, utterly lost upon the hearers, by a pronunciation that is 
disagreeable, either in the sound, or in the action ; and, for 
this reason, delivery holds the fifth part." But it cannot be 
denied, and therefore ought not to be concealed, that this 
great teacher of eloquence admits this method of speaking by 
mental preparation to require more natural talent, more dis- 
cipline, and a more thorough intellectual effort than that of 
writing verbatim what an orator has to say ; speaking from 
a manuscript he represents as the lazy man's method ; from 
the beginning to the end of his classic work, he loads with 
every variety of condemnation the idea of reading a dis- 



17 Institutes, Lib. viii. Introd. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 447 

course of any character to the public ; at the very moment 
that he confesses the labor called for in the education of a 
good speaker, as compared with the inferior demands of a 
mere reader, he maintains that a man can just as well learn 
to speak without a manuscript, as he can learn any other art ; 
and, unwilling that any should be deterred from this method 
by the difficulties to be encountered, or seduced into the 
cheaper way of writing and reading, closes a most eloquent 
passage, in which he had endeavored to impart the lofty 
ambition of being an accomplished and ready speaker, by a 
high and noble sentiment : " It is shameful to despair, when 
it is possible to succeed !" 

Such is the art of speaking in public, as taught and estab- 
lished by Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, whose abilities in 
this department of science were never surpassed, and never 
equalled. They were the founders of eloquence. Their 
authority has been paramount, as well as perpetual and uni- 
versal, for about twenty centuries. They are the three great 
standards ; and the world has never written another name in 
company with theirs. The world knows not their equal ; and 
yet the three reject, condemn, and even ridicule, the writing 
and reading method. They reject, condemn and ridicule the 
method of the sermon readers of the present day. They say, 
too, that this method was condemned by the great majority 
of the first writers upon eloquence of the classic nations. 
Those nations suffered no such apology for speaking as doling 
out a manuscript. These great authors teach as Quintilian 
expressly says, that " the best set of words are those that 
arise from things, or from the subject, and receive from this 
source the luster they communicate ;" they sport, as in the 
language of this author, over those " who htint after words 
as if they were retired into crevices and corners, and wanted 
to keep out of sight ;" and they pour contempt upon all those 
make-believe orators, who, having not the gifts nor the graces 
of a proper style of .speaking, and are yet so ambitious to be 



448 METHODISM TN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY \ 

accounted speakers, that they will stoop to read what they 
onght to be able to ntter from the heart, and who, in the 
attempt of appearing to speak when they only read, "must 
stick by their notes and written hist ructions,"' as Qnintilian 
again laughingly declares, " and nutter like a bird attempting 
to fly with one leg tethered by a string." It may, indeed, 
be considered as a settled fact, that the entire authority of 
the Greek and Roman classics, from the days of Aristotle to 
those of Cicero, and from Cicero to Quintilian, a period em- 
bracing nearly every eminent rhetorician of either language, 
is an the side of speaking without a manuscript ; and it would 
seem, therefore, as if the learned professor of the theological 
seminary of Bangor, in behalf of sernion readers generally, 
were exhibiting something more than courage in making so 
venturesome an attack on that style of speaking, which was 
the only style regarded as worthy of the name of oratory in 
the classic ages. 

TThenever the classic ages are referred to, however, as a 
demonstration of the artistic superiority of speaking over 
reading, the name and fame of Demosthenes are at once 
cited, by the advocates of sermon reading, as an argument 
in opposition. Tbey cite this example, just as if they thought 
Demosthenes was in the habit of reading his orations from 
the Athenian benia. He wrote many of them, I admit, but 
there is no account, in any classic writer, of his ever reading 
one. He wrote these, too, as is stated on the best authority, 
not because he considered writing necessary to perfect elocu- 
tion generally, but because of a natural impediment of his 
voice, which he undertook in this way to conquer, and which 
made him, as he thought, an exception to the established 
rule of his art. His written speeches, however, which were 
what we all know them to be, were not regarded, by those 
who heard them, as his best. He often spoke, not only 
without writing, but without premeditation ; and, in these 
sudden discourses, he frequently surpassed himself, speaking 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



44:9 



with a power that seemed to his hearers like strains of in- 
spiration. " If we believe Eratosthenes, Demetrius the Pha- 
lerean, and the comic poets," says Plutarch, in his life of 
Demosthenes, "there was a greater spirit and boldness in 
his unpremeditated orations, than in those he had committed 
to writing ;" and Eratosthenes says that, " in his extempora- 
neous harangues, he often spoke as from a supernatural im- 
pulse." 18 This lingual impediment, nevertheless, which 
caused him to write so many of his speeches, has given him 
a position in modern times, which the best judges of his own 
generation did not give him. His orations exist ; while those 
of his off-hand competitors perished with the breath that 
uttered them ; but, among those extemporaneous debaters, 
who often encountered and overcame him before an Attic 
audience, there were those who entirely surpassed him. This, 
I know, is not suffered to be the common opinion in this 
nation of sermon readers ; for there are too many interested 
to conceal what classic criticism has left us upon this subject ; 
but it is undeniably a fact, that the philosophers and rheto- 
ricians of Athens did not set Demosthenes, as we do, at 
the head of the orators of their country. His success was 
looked upon as great, and even wonderful, when his early 
defects of voice were taken into consideration. " It was 
agreed, however, on all hands," says Plutarch, " that Denia- 
des excelled all the orators, when he trusted to nature only ; 
and that his sudden effusions were superior to the labored 
speeches of Demosthenes." And in this immediate connec- 
tion the historian adds : " Aristo of Chios gives us the fol- 
lowing account of the opinion of Theophrastus concerning 
these orators. Being asked in what light he looked upon 
Demosthenes as an orator, he said : ' I think him worthy of 
Athens ' — what of Demades, 4 1 think him above it.' " And 
yet, this Demades, who takes rank above Demosthenes as an 



8 Plutarch's Lives, p. 547, Applegate's Ed. 



450 v METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHTilSTIAXITT '. 

orator, we are told by Qumtilian, did not dare to write out 
his speeches — neque enim orationes scribere est ausus — for 
fear of marring them ! 19 

Dernades was right. The living image of the mind, the 
ethereal sacredness of passion, the mercurial delicacy of 
both thought and feeling, are coy of the mechanical labors of 
the pen. The true orator, holding in his intellect a clear 
conception of what he wishes to accomplish, and perceiving 
the steps successively to be taken to reach his goal, cannot 
consent to materialize that ideal, to profane that fancy, to 
waste the fine frenzy of his soul, by the slavish work of 
composition. He feels that such a task would be a desecra- 
tion. He conceals within him the conscious burden of his 
spirit ; he turns it over and over, till his conception is as 
clear as sunlight to his intelligence ; he recreates it again and 
again, till his heart swells with the most delightful passion ; 
he still ponders upon it, all the while waxing more and more 
intense, till his imagination burns with an impetuous trans- 
port ; and thus he works it out, every hour more and more 
carried away with the prelibation of his coming triumph, till 
he can scarcely wait the slow approach of his opportunity to 
speak. When the happy moment comes, though oppressed 
and pained by the delicious labor of his soul, he rejoices in 
Spirit, and rises with a vvill — not to dole from manuscript 
what he had struggled to think and strove to feel in the 
dull retirement of his study — but to pour out of him 
what he now thinks and feels, and what he can hold no 
longer. This is oratory ; and it was the oratory of the classic 
ages. 

But it is not the example and precepts of classic antiquity 
alone which these readers and their apologists have to 
encounter, for the best experience of the modern world is 
equally against them ; and it would be easy, even in this age 

19 Plutarch's Lives, p. 54*7, Applegate's Ed. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



451 



of manuscript delivery, to array the entire force of the first- 
class rhetoricians of the leading nations of the present day on 
the side opposite to the reading method, in every perform- 
ance where the highest eloquence is desirable or expected. 
This, however, would be too wide a labor for the compass of 
a chapter. Nor is it needed ; for I can conceive of no display 
of such writers capable of adding anything to the established 
authority of the standards already so largely quoted ; but to 
show that the ancient doctrine has been, and therefore can 
again be, justified by the success of modern times, whenever 
there is a man bold enough to declare his independence of a 
degenerate custom, and adopt the classic method, I will men- 
tion a representative name for each of the non-manuscript 
methods by way of demonstration. As a specimen of what 
is yet possible in speaking from premeditation only, I will 
refer to the Rev. Robert Hall, who, the first time he under- 
took to speak, could not open his mouth after the reading of 
his text, but sat down with the exclamation that he had 
"lost all his ideas," and whose failures were frequent for 
quite a period afterward. But he would not be dis- 
couraged. Having made up his mind, that the method of 
speaking without manuscript was the only one for the pulpit, 
he resolved to persevere till he should master it. He did 
persevere ; his studies and his efforts were all bent in that 
direction ; and the end was, that he who, at first, rose only 
to sit down with shame, became the greatest pulpit orator 
of his age and country. Can the English language produce 
a collection of discourses more artistic in design, or more 
perfect in execution, than that given us in his published 
works ? Do not our elementary books in elocution, and our 
standard authorities in rhetoric, incessantly quote those dis- 
courses for specimens, not only of the highest flights of ora- 
tory, but of the dignified and grand in English composition ? 
What a picture of pulpit eloquence of the first order is 
drawn out in the description of his manner of preaching by 



452 



METHODISM IN RELATION 



TO CHEISTIAXITT : 



his very learned biographer, Dr. Gregory ! " The eorn- 
mencemeDt of his sermons," says that able critic, " did not 
excite much expectation in strangers, except they were such 
as recollected how the mental agitation, produced by diffi- 
dence, characterized the first sentences of some of the orators 
of antiquity. He began with hesitation, and often in a very 
low and feeble tone, coughing frequently, as though he were 
oppressed by asthmatic obstructions. As he proceeded, his 
manner became easy, graceful, and at length highly impas- 
sioned ; his voice also acquired more flexibility, body, and 
sweetness, and in all his happier and more successful efforts, 
swelled into a stream of the most touching and impressive 
melody. The further he advanced, the more spontaneous, 
natural, and free from labor seemed the progression of 
thought. He announced the results of the most extensive 
reading, of the most impatient investigation, or of the pro- 
foundest thinking, with such unassuming simplicity, yet set 
them in such a position of obvious and lucid reality, that the 
auditors wondered how things so simple and manifest should 
have escaped them. Throughout his sermons, he kept his 
subject thoroughly in view, and so incessantly brought for- 
ward new arguments, or new illustrations, to confirm or to 
explain it, that with him amplification was almost invariably 
accumulative in its tendency. One thought was succeeded 
by another, and that by another and another, each more 
weighty than the preceding, each more calculated to deepen 
and render permanent, the ultimate impression. He could 
at pleasure adopt the unadorned, the ornamental, or the 
energetic ; and, indeed, combine them in every diversity of 
modulation. In his higher flights, what he said of Burke 
might, with the slightest deduction, be applied to himself— 
1 that his imperial fancy laid all nature under tribute, and 
collected riches from every scene of the creation, and from 
every walk of art ' — and at the same time, that could be 
affirmed of Mr. Hall which could not be affirmed of Mr. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



453 



Burke — that he never fatigued and oppressed by gaudy and 
superfluous imagery. Whenever the subject obviously justi- 
fied it, he would yield the reins to an eloquence more diffu- 
sive and magnificent than the ordinary course of pulpit 
instruction seemed to require ; yet so exquisite was his per- 
ception of beauty, and so sound his judgment, that not the 
coldest taste, provided it were real taste, could ever wish an 
image omitted which Mr. Hall had introduced. His inex- 
haustible variety augmented the general effect. The same 
images, the same illustrations, scarcely ever recurred. So 
ample were his stores, that repetition of every kind was 
usually avoided ; while in his illustrations he would connect 
and contract what was disjointed and opposed, or distinctly 
unfold what was abstracted or obscure, in such terms as 
were generally intelligible, not only to the well-informed, but 
to the meanest capacity. As he advanced to his practical 
applications, all his mental powers were shown in the most 
palpable but finely balanced exercise. His mind would, if I 
may so speak, collect itself and come forth with a luminous 
activity, proving, as he advanced, how vast, and, in some 
sense, how next to irresistible those powers were. In such 
seasons, his preaching communicated universal animation : his 
congregation would seem to partake of his spirit, to think and 
feel as he did, to be fully influenced by the presence of the 
objects which he had placed before them, fully actuated by the 
motives which he had enforced with such energy and pathos. 
All w T as doubtless heightened by his singular rapidity of 
utterance — by the rhythmical structure of his sentences, cal- 
culated at once for the transmission of the most momentous 
truths, for the powers of his voice, and for the convenience 
of breathing freely at measured intervals — and, more than 
all, by the unequivocal earnestness and sincerity which per- 
vaded the whole, and by the eloquence of his most speaking 
countenance and penetrating eye. In his sublimer strains, 
not only was every faculty of the soul enkindled and in 



454: METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY*. 



entire operation, hut his very features seemed fully to sym- 
pathize with the spirit, and to give out, nay to throw out, 
thought and sentiment, and feeling. From the commence- 
ment of his discourse an almost breathless silence prevailed, 
deeply impressive and solemnizing from its singular intense- 
ness. Not a sound was heard but that of the preacher's 
voice — scarcely an eye but was fixed upon him — not a coun- 
tenance that he did not watch, and read, and interpret, as he 
surveyed them again and again with his rapid, ever-excur- 
sive glance. As he advanced and increased in animation, 
five or six of the auditors would be seen to rise and lean for- 
ward over the front of their pews, still keeping their eyes 
upon him. Some new or striking sentiment or expression 
would, in a few minutes, cause others to rise in like manner : 
shortly afterward still more, and so on, until, long before the 
close of the sermon, it often happened that a considerable 
portion of the congregation were seen standing — every eye 
directed to the preacher, yet now and then for a moment 
glancing from one to another, thus transmitting and recipro- 
cating thought and feeling. Mr. Hall himself, though mani- 
festly absorbed in his subject, conscious of the whole, receiv- 
ing new animation from what he thus witnessed, reflecting it 
back upon those who were already alive to the inspiration, 
until all that were susceptible of thought and emotion 
seemed wound up to the utmost limit of elevation on earth — 
when he would close, and they would reluctantly and slowly 
resume their seats." 29 

Such is Dr. Gregory's daguerreotype of the preaching 
of Robert Hall; and now, let it be remembered, nearly every 
one of Mr. Hall's discourses, and the most celebrated of 
them all, were delivered without manuscript, they not having 
been written out till after they had been delivered. Mr 

20 Dr. Gregory's Memoirs of Kobert Hall prefixed to vol. iii. of Hall's 
Works, pp. 36-38. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



455 



Hall, in a word, is a fair specimen of that method of speak- 
ing, which, because it premeditates but does not write, is 
said to be so sure to run into " mere flippant, off-hand, shal- 
low, extemporaneous dribble !" 

Nearly contemporaneous with Robert Hall, the Rev. 
George Whitefield, the prince of declamation, lived. He, 
too, spoke without a manuscript. He wrote very full 
sketches, but left room for every sudden impulse. His mat- 
ter was not equal to that of Mr. Hall ; but, in his style of 
delivery, he was quite superior to him. He was pronounced, 
by those who heard him, as the greatest elocutionist of 
modern times. The collection of his discourses, so-called, is 
but little better than a book of sketches of his leading ser- 
mons; and some of these were . urn mitt ed to paper after 
they had been several times delivered without the smallest 
written preparation. He has been ranked among reciters, 
but he had a way of preparing for the pulpit quite his own. 
Like Hall, his habit was to tlx upon his topic, and then work 
it all out in his mind, repeating the divisions and subdivisions 
of it to himself, sometimes selecting the very language he 
expected to employ, till every part of it was fastened in his 
memory ; he next wrote out his sketch and committed this 
to memory with great care; and then he came before his 
audience, looking them fully in the eye, drawing the inspira- 
tion needed in his delivery from the multitude before him, 
and supplying himself with new matter, with illustrations, 
figures, action, from the nature of his subject and from the 
circumstances of the passing moment. Such was his manner 
of preparation ; and his success as a speaker was truly won- 
derful. Dr. Franklin celebrates it in a passage too familiar 
to need quotation ; and Southey, in his life of Wesley, when 
he stood at the head of English critics, attributes that suc- 
cess not to the fact that he was a learned man and wrote out 
his marvellous discourses, but to the circumstance that he 
did not read them : "It was a great advantage, but it was 



456 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 



not the only one," says South ey, " nor the greatest, which 
he derived from repeating his discourses, and reciting instead 
of reading them. Had they been delivered from a written 
copy, one delivery would have been like the last. The paper 
would have operated as a spell, from which he could not 
depart, invention sleeping while the utterance followed the 
eye. But when he had nothing before him except the 
audience whom he was addressing, the judgment and the 
imagination, as well as the memory, were called forth. 
Those parts were omitted which had been felt to come 
feebly from the tongue, and fall heavily on the ear; and their 
place was supplied by matter newly laid in in the course of 
his studies, or fresh from the feeling of the moment. They 
who lived with him could trace him, in his sermons, to the 
book which he had last been reading, or the subject which 
had recently taken his attention. But the salient points of 
his oratory were not prepared passages / they were bursts 
of passion, like jets of a geyser, when the spring is in full 
play." 

So obvious, in fact, are the evils of the reading method, 
that there has scarcely been a day, since the birth of Christ- 
ianity, or since the reading of sermons began to be intro- 
duced, when the leading spirits of the Church have not 
contended, as Quintilian did among the Romans, against 
this corruption of all manly eloquence. On the continent of 
Europe, these defenders of the purity of preaching have 
been very encouragingly successful ; for the first pulpit 
orators of France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, with 
only rare exceptions, have gained their loftiest triumphs 
without reading ; and in England, where the reading mania 
began earliest and struggled hardest, and where it has run 
the most inglorious career — so inglorious that it has become 
a custom for a minister to purchase his manuscript discourses 
as he does his dogs and horses — there never have been want- 
ing men of the highest eminence to warn the clergy against 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 457 

the debasing practice of reading sermons. The Rev. Dr. 
John Edwards, in his work entitled " The Preacher " — a 
work of great authority with the English clergy — speaks 
emphatically in opposition to the reading method : " There 
are several," says he, at the opening of this reading era, 
" that scandalously confine themselves to their papers, and 
read them but indhTerently after all. A man would think 
that some of them are but then learning to read, or that 
they had never seen their notes before that time. This, 
indeed, is no other than the perverting of the nature of 
things ; for the speaker should look on those he directs his 
•speech to. Wherefore, the custom of those who never look 
off the book is unnatural and improper. Beside, if a 
sermon be wholly read, it loses a great deal of its virtue 
and efficacy, because hereby all laudable action is laid aside, 
and generally the most ungrateful and shameful postures are 
taken up, as hanging down their heads and lodging their 
chins in their breast. Wherefore, I advise my brethren to 
exercise their talent of memory, and those that are young 
especially to make use of it at their first undertaking the 
preacher's office, that so it may become easy to them ever 
after." 

At another time, Sir Richard Blackmore, in his work 
styled The Accomplished Preacher — another work of the 
highest reputation in Great Britain — dissuades the British 
clergy from the corrupt habit of reading sermons : " It is fit 
to inquire," he says, in his antique and hearty manner, 
" whether it be more useful to read a written discourse, or 
bespeak the audience without book. And there are many 
reasons that should determine us to favor and prefer the 
last. It is plain this is more natural, and therefore more apt 
to move the hearer ; and the best masters of oratory assure 
us that when art and study betray themselves, they lose, in a 
great measure, their force and efficacy, and that no figures 
are so successful as those that are wholly concealed, and no 

20 



458 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 1 

discourses so persuasive as those that proceed, at least in 
appearance, from the impulse of the present passion ; but 
this can never be observed when the applicatory part of the 
sermon is read; for the meanest auditor will discover, that 
this is the effect of skill and industry, and will therefore be 
apt to sit indifferent, and without serious attention." 

A much higher authority still, the Right Rev. Archbishop 
Leighton, one of the ablest men ever reared up by the Church 
of England, and at the very head of her pulpit orators, 
raised his voice, as well as offered his example, in favor of 
the non-manuscript style of preaching : " Any deliberate opi- 
nion of this great man must deserve respect," says his bk>» 
grapher, " even when it may not command acquiescence. It 
would therefore be wrong to omit mentioning that he dis- 
liked the practice of reading sermons — a practice scarcely 
known across the seas — being of opinion that it detracted 
much from the weight and authority of preaching. 'I know," 
he said, ' that weakness of the memory is pleaded in excuse 
for this custom ; but better minds would make better memo- 
ries. Such an excuse is unworthy of a man, and much more 
of a father ' — [the ancient title of a minister] — who may want 
vent indeed in addressing his children, but ought never to 
want matter. Like Elihu, he should be freshed by speaking." 

Such were some of the testimonies and exhortations deli- 
vered, from the loftiest positions, against the introduction of 
the effeminate custom of reading sermons ; but the victims 
of this vice were in the habit of answering, as they do at 
this day, that it was impossible for a public speaker to com- 
mand a finished diction without writing ; and it was in reply 
to this apology that the celebrated Bishop Burnet, a name 
of eternal honor in the English Church, as well as in English 
history, and a scholar of the highest order, took up his pen 
in defence of simplicity of language in the pulpit : " The 
words in a sermon," he maintains, " must be simple, and in 
common use, not savoring of the schools, nor above the 



THE SECOND CAESE OF ITS SUCCESS. 459 

understanding of the people. All long periods, such as carry 
two or three different thoughts in them, must be avoided ; 
for few hearers can follow or apprehend these ; niceties of 
style are lost before a common auditory. In short, a 
preacher is to fancy himself as in the room of the most 
unlearned man in his whole parish ; and therefore he must 
put such parts of his discourse as he would have all under- 
stand in so plain a form of words, that it may not be beyond 
the meanest of them. This he will certainly do, if his desire 
is to edify them rather than to make them admire himself, as 
a learned and high-spoken man." 

In this paragraph, the illustrious prelate is only repeating 
the precepts of the old Greek and Roman writers ; for not 
only Aristotle, but Cicero and Quintilian assert, that the 
most proper diction is that flow of words which rises most 
spontaneously to the mind, when it is set in motion by a due 
appreciation of the subject. Quintilian, I know, presents 
two modes of preparation for the delivery of an oration — 
writing and premeditation — but in no case does he allow a 
a man to read ; and, after discussing both these modes at 
great length and with equal skill, he makes known his con- 
clusion in the following manner : " The richest fruit, and, as 
it were, the fairest reward of an orator's long and laborious 
course of study, is the power of speaking extemporaneously. 
He who is not able to do this, ought, in my opinion, to give 
up the business of the bar ; and, if the pen is all he possesses, 
let him employ it to other purposes." 21 The business of the 
bar was nearly the only business known to the Romans 
calling for professional oratory ; and the principles of elocu- 
tion, as laid down by these great classics, as certainly include 
all sorts of speaking. \There there was time, and the cir- 
cumstances demanded it, they permitted a speaker to write 
and commit ; but they assert, at the same time, that this was 



31 Institutes, Lib. x. c. 8. 



460 METHODISM FN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 



not often practiced; and it has been stated before that 
Cicero, when he did not speak without j^remeditation, made 
use of only rough notes, which he either held in his hand, or 
laid upon his desk. Hortensius, his great rival, aud often- 
times his superior, like Robert Hall, spoke entirely from pre- 
meditation. Reading, as our modern sermon readers deliver 
their discourses, was a thing entirely condemned in the 
classic world ; writing itself, when carried to any length, 
was not generally approved ; for all the great authorities 
agreed, that a manuscript, however employed, was a decided 
bar to a free and easy elocution ; and Quintilian, the first 
authority of them all, utters his convictions upon this point, 
in the strongest terms : " As to my own part," he says, 
" when we are to speak extempore, I am against writing 
anything at all; because our mind will always be called off" to 
what we have thus prepared, and we have no opportimity 
of trying our extemporary faculties. Thus the mind, by 
wavering between the writing and the memory, loses all the 
benefit of the one, without attempting to say anything new 
from the other." 22 

So far, then, from its being the opinion of the most cele- 
brated masters and teachers of the art of sj^eaking, whom the 
world has known, that the modes of speaking which dis- 
pense with the manuscript must necessarily run out into that 
" thin liquid flow," that " flippant, off-hand, shallow, extem- 
poraneous dribble " — of our critic, it was the method taught 
and practised by themselves ; it was the method which 
they regarded as the " richest fruit and fairest reward" of 
the most laborious application; and, instead of joining in a 
shallow tirade against this style of speaking, they would have 
banished from their pulpits all persons not possessing the 
ability to employ it. " If the pen is all he possesses," the 
classic maxim is, " let him employ it to other purposes." 



22 Institutes, Lib. x. c. 8. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



461 



With this judgment, as has been seen, corresponds the 
expressed conviction of the highest literary and clerical 
authorities of the British world ; there is a warm discussion 
now in progress there, carried on by the first characters of the 
country, against the practice of reading sermons ; and the 
British Standard, a periodical of great influence in religious 
circles, expresses the general conviction of English scholars, 
with the exception of those who have made themselves slaves 
to their pen and paper, when it says: "Every departure, in 
religious instruction, from the language of the masses, is to 
be deprecated as unfavorable to usefulness. By language, I 
mean both the words employed, and the formation of those 
words into sentences. Whitefield frequently said, ' I use 
market language ;' and a higher than Whitefield said, 4 We 
use great plainness of speech.' The language in which men 
buy and sell, and conduct the affairs of life, is the language 
proper to be employed in communicating the knowledge 
of religion, and carrying on the exercises of devotion." 
But this language of the masses, so sanctioned by every high 
authority from the classic ages to our own, is just that lan- 
guage which will flow the most readily and copiously from 
the lips of a man, whose head and heart are full of an impor- 
tant subject. A man fully roused feels as did Demades, he 
does not dare to write ; for as Quintilian again says, " an 
imagination warm with recent ideas gives to a style an unin- 
terrupted rapidity, which must be deadened were we to com- 
mit to writing what we have to say, and must evaporate by 
being delayed ;" and a man not much roused, if the most 
spontaneous diction is the best diction, does not need to 
write. In either case, the non-manuscript method will 
always be sufficient, will always be the best, if the speaker 
will remember the maxim of the ancient orators : " Of your 
words be careful, of your thoughts anxious." 

Whoever may have rejected this wise advice, the min- 
istry of Methodism, I am thankful to say, has heeded it ; and 



462 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY * 

it seems remarkable that an intelligent man, and much more, 
entire fraternities of intelligent ministers, in this day and 
generation of knowledge and improvement, can so persever- 
ingly hold out in their custom of reading sermons, against 
the authority of all antiquity, against the plainest principles 
of the art of speaking, and against the most brilliant illustra- 
tions of that art from the time that the first classic oration 
was delivered to the world. Do not these reading clergy- 
men know the classics ? Do they know the custom and the 
teaching of the Greek and Roman orators during the entire 
period of their sway ? Do they know how the pulpit orators 
of the middle ages, from Vigilantius to Luther, wielded their 
power and obtained their renown ? Do they know whether 
it was the reading or the speaking clergy of our mother land, 
from its earliest to its latest annals, which stood highest as 
effective ministers, or first on the scrolls of fame ? Do they 
know by what style of speaking it was that Bossuet, and 
Bourdaloue, and Massillon reformed the pulpit of continental 
Europe, and from what corruption it was thus redeemed ? 
If they have not made themselves acquainted with this sub- 
ject, why do they delay to learn ? If they have, how can 
they continue in their unclassical, unscientific, degenerate 
custom, or how can any individual of them send out such a 
criticism as the one referred to, and risk their reputation 
with mankind ! 

If the past is too distant to have its due influence, why is 
the lesson given by the passing hour disregarded ? Who, at 
the present moment, are the most effective, the most popular, 
the most ready, able, and eloquent preachers of the world ? 
Who are the ten chief champions of the pulpit in this 
country ? Select the ten, not according to any one person's 
taste, but according to the public verdict, and will there be 
found an habitual sermon reader among them all ? Would 
you reach any other result, should you raise the question, 
for any period of our national existence, since your personal 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



463 



recollection ? Go with this inquiry to Great Britain, and ask 
the citizens of that intelligent country who are the ten whom 
they now most delight and most throng to hear ? Whence 
comes this infatuation, therefore, which so blinds men that, 
though having eyes, they cannot see ? 

It is not necessary, however, that our attention should be 
given in this inquiry entirely to the pulpit. The children of this 
world, we are assured, are oftentimes wiser than the children 
of light ; and it is certain that their example, not only in the 
classic era, but also in our own, has been generally against 
the practice here condemned. The legal profession, from the 
days of Cicero to those of Choate, has been almost wholly in 
the habit of rejecting lengthy manuscripts, and of speaking 
either from mental preparation only, or from rough notes ; 
and it may be safely affirmed, that a reading barrister would 
not only lose his causes, but his practice, and be laughed by 
the multitude from the most distant approaches to the bar. 
It is a fact which should speak in tones not to be disre- 
garded by the reading clergy of our country, that not a 
solitary barrister in any civilized nation, whether eminent 
or not eminent, since the days of Quintilian, has been 
recorded among the known annals of the profession, as 
having pleaded his causes in the manner in which the 
reading ministry plead the cause of the everlasting God. 
Lawyers have always been, and are yet, off-hand speakers ; 
their glory has all been won by the off-hand method ; 
and it is a glory, so far as oratory is concerned, which 
throws into thick shade the utmost achievements of the 
best sermon readers since the world began. What would 
Curran, or Emmet, or Erskine, or Wirt, or Pinckney have 
done, in the most capital or critical trial ever conducted by 
him, had some rhetorician prepared and handed him a 
written speech, were it as eloquent and powerful as the very 
god of eloquence could have himself conceived, to be read 
before the court ? He would have done with it as Socrates 



464 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY '. 

did with the splendid oration sent him by Lysias, the fore- 
most Grecian orator of his day. The philosopher was on 
trial for his life ; the oration was pronounced the most 
affecting ever composed by that prince of style ; but the wise 
man preferring to make no defense, rather than to approach 
the tribunal with a display of words, returned the manuscript 
to its author, saying, " That it was a beautiful composition, 
but not suited to his way of thinking." ISTor can I see any- 
thing so very remarkable in this conduct, for I should think 
that almost any man, unless it were an infatuated sermon- 
reader, would rather run the hazard of non-resistance, than 
that of making a mockery of his defense ; and such has been 
the opinion and the practice of the bar, since law and elo- 
quence first formed their alliance for the protection of man- 
kind. 23 

The same style of speaking, so strangely condemned by 
the manuscript preachers of modern times, has been the 
style adopted in all the parliaments and senates of every en- 
lightened nation in all periods of the world. The non- 
manuscript mode, as has been perceived, was the ruling 
mode among the orators and statesmen of ancient Greece. 
It was the method, too, as both Cicero and Quintilian tell us, 
of the best days of Rome. It has been the method, with an 
occasional exception, as in the case of Burke, in all the legis- 
lative chambers of the free European nations of modem his- 
tory. It was the method of Pitt, of Fox, of Canning, and of 

23 I have quoted what Socrates said from Plutarch, but Cicero (De Ora- 
tore, Lib. i. c. 54), says that the philosopher compared the idea of his 
reciting the written speech before his judges, to his putting on Sicyonian 
shoes, remarkable for their trim and effeminate appearance, and declared 
that he must be more fearless and manly, uttering from the heart what 
might be proper to say on such an occasion. The shoes of Sicyon are 
described in Lucret. iv. 1121. Socrates thought, it seems, that the read- 
ing or reciting of a speech would give him the appearance of a literary 
dandy ! 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 465 

nearly every British statesman of the olden time. It is the 
method, with the exception of Macaulay, of all the great ora- 
tors of England at the present day. It has ever been the method 
of our own legislative halls, which, in the speeches of our great 
orators, have rivaled the brightest glory of the most eloquent 
and illustrious era ever beheld by man. Look for a moment, 
at the career of Daniel Webster. Let Robert Hall show what 
can be done by the method of premeditation. Let White- 
field stand for what is possible by recitation. Let Webster 
demonstrate the limits of the extemporaneous style. Web- 
ster, when a boy, could not make a declamation before the 
pupils and teachers of his school. His first attempts at public 
speaking, when a young man, were sometimes but little 
better than failures of the most mortifying kind. But he 
persevered, and like Hall, he finally mastered the art of 
speaking. He became the best extemporaneous orator of 
his clay ; and it is wonderful how any man who ever heard 
of the name of Webster, could say that the extemporaneous 
method of delivery, when developed and perfected as it may 
be, is not equal to any demand, or to any emergency, that 
can be conceived. Can any demand, can any emergency, go 
further to try a man, or his way of speaking, than that 
which called Webster to his feet on the 26th of January, 
1830, when he addressed the Senate of the United States on 
the subject of Foot's resolution in reply to Hayne ? And 
yet, though speaking extemporaneously after only a single 
night's preparation, the greater part of which was spent in 
sleep, as he tells the world in the speech itself, were not 
those demands and emergencies entirely met ? It seems 
as if critics are not only sometimes narrow in their principles 
but forgetful of their facts. Let a good witness relate to us 
now,- after the lapse of only a few years, what he heard and 
saw on that great day, that we may behold whether this 
way of speaking, made " the mode and the law," must 
necessarily run into that " flippant, off-hand, shallow, extem- 

20* 



466 METHODISM EST RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 



poraneous dribble " so strangely charged upon it by sermon 
readers. Let the day, the occasion, and the scene be again 
revived: "It was on Tuesday, January, 26th, 1830," says 
Mr. March, whose account has become a part of the history 
of his country, " a day to be hereafter forever memorable in 
senatorial annals, that the Senate resumed the consideration 
of Foot's resolution. There never was before, in the city, an 
occasion of so much excitement. To witness this great intel- 
lectual contest, multitudes of strangers had for two or three 
days previous been rushing into the city, and the hotels over- 
flowed. As early as nine o'clock, of this morning, crowds 
poured into the capitol in hot haste. At twelve o'clock, the 
hour of meeting, the Senate-chamber, its galleries, floor, 
and even lobbies, was filled to its utmost capacity. The very 
stairways were dark with men, who hung on to one another 
like bees in a swarm. The courtesy of senators accorded to 
the fairer sex room on the floor — the most gallant of them 
their own seats. The gay bonnets and brilliant dresses 
threw a varied and picturesque beauty over the scene, soft- 
ening and embellishing it. 

" Seldom, if ever, has a speaker in this or any other 
country had more powerful incentives to exertion — a subject 
the determination of which involved the most important 
interests, and even the duration of the republic ; competitors 
unequaled in reputation, ability, or position ; a name to make 
still more glorious, or lose forever ; and an audience com- 
prising not only persons of this country most eminent in 
intellectual greatness, but representatives of other nations, 
where the art of eloquence had flourished for ages. All the 
soldier seeks in opportunity was here. 

"Mr. Webster perceived, and felt equal to, the destinies of 
the moment. The very greatness of the hazard exhilarated 
him. His spirits rose with the occasion. He awaited the 
time of the onset with a stern and impatient joy. He felt 
like the war-horse of the Scriptures, who 'paweth in the 



THE SECOND CAUSE OP ITS SUCCESS. 



467 



valley and rejoiceth in his strength ; who goeth on to meet 
the armed men ; who sayeth among the trumpets, ha ! ha ! 
and who smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the cap- 
tains and the shouting.' 

" The anxiety to hear the speech was so intense, irre- 
pressible, and universal, that no sooner had the vice-president 
assumed the chair, than a motion was made, and unanimously 
carried, to postpone the ordinary preliminaries of senatorial 
action, and to take up immediately the consideration of the 
resolution. 

" Mr. Webster rose and addressed the Senate. His exor- 
dium is known by heart everywhere. ' Mr. President, when 
the mariner has been tossed, for many days, in thick weather, 
and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first 
pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his 
latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him 
from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and, 
before we float further on the waves of this debate, refer to 
the point from which we departed, that we may, at least, be 
able to form some conjecture where we now are. I ask for 
the reading of the resolution.' 

" There wanted no more to enchain the attention. There 
was a spontaneous, though silent, expression of eager appro- 
bation, as the orator concluded these opening remarks ; and, 
while the clerk read the resolution, many attempted the 
impossibility of getting nearer the speaker. Every head was 
inclined closer toward him, every ear turned in the direction 
of his voice, and that deep, sudden, mysterious silence fol- 
lowed, which always attends fullness of emotion. From the 
sea of upturned faces before him, the orator beheld his 
thoughts reflected as from a mirror. The varying counte- 
nance, the suffused eye, the earnest smile, and ever attractive 
look, assured him of his audience's entire sympathy. If 
among his hearers there were those who affected at first an 
indifference to his glowing thoughts and fervent periods, the 



468 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY : 

difficult mask was soon laid aside, and profound, undisguised, 
devoted attention followed. In the earlier parts of the 
speech, one of his principal opponents seemed deeply en- 
grossed in the careful perusal of a newspaper he held before 
his face ; but this, on nearer approach, proved to be upside 
down. In truth, all, sooner or later, voluntarily, or in spite 
of themselves, were wholly carried away by the eloquence of 
the orator. 

" Those who had doubted Mr. Webster's ability to cope 
with and overcome his opponents, were fully satisfied of their 
error before he had proceeded far in his speech. Their fears 
soon took another direction. When they heard his sentences 
of powerful thought, towering in accumulating grandeur one 
above another, as if the orator strove, Titan-like, to reach 
the very heavens themselves, they were dizzy with the appre- 
hension that he would break down in his flight. They dared 
not believe that genius, learning, any intellectual endow- 
ment, however uncommon, that was simply mortal, could sus- 
tain itself long in a career seemingly so perilous. They 
feared an Icarian fall. 

"Ah, who can ever forget, that was present to hear, 
the tremendous, the awful burst of eloquence, with which 
the orator spoke of the Old Bay State ? or the tones of deep 
pathos in which the words were pronounced : c Mr. President, 
I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts. There 
she is — behold her and judge for yourselves. There is her 
history — the world knows it by heart ! The past, at least, 
is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, 
and Bunker Hill — and there they will remain forever ! The 
bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle of independ- 
ence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State, from New 
England to Georgia — and there they will lie forever ! And, 
sir, where American Liberty raised its first voice, and where 
its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in 
the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



469 



If discord and disunion should wound it — if party strife and 
blind ambition should hawk at and tear it — if folly and mad- 
ness, if uneasiness under salutary restraints, shall succeed to 
separate it from that Union, by which alone its existence is 
made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle 
in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm, 
with whatever of vigor it may still retain, over the friends 
who may gather round it ; and it will fall at last, if fall it 
must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and 
on the very spot of its origin.' 

" What New England heart was there but throbbed with 
vehement, tumultuous, irrepressible emotion, as he dwelt 
upon New England sufferings, New England struggles, and 
New England triumphs, during the war of the Revolution ? 
There was scarcely a dry eye in the Senate ; all hearts were 
overcome ; grave judges, and men grown old in dignified 
life, turned aside their heads to conceal the evidences of their 
emotion. 

" In one corner of the gallery was clustered a group of 
Massachusetts men. They had hung from the first moment 
on the words of the speaker, with feelings variously but 
always warmly excited, deepening in intensity as he pro- 
ceeded. At first, while the orator was going through his 
exordium, they held their breath and hid their faces, mindful 
of the savage attack upon him and New England, and the 
fearful odds against him, her champion ; as he went deeper 
into his speech, they felt easier ; when he turned Hayne's 
flank, on Banquo's ghost, they breathed freer and deeper. 
But now, as he alluded to Massachusetts, their feelings were 
strained to the highest tension ; and when the orator, 
concluding his encomium upon the land of their birth, 
turned, intentionally or otherwise, his burning eye full upon 
them, they shed tears like girls. 

" No one who was not present can understand the excite- 
ment of the scene. No one who was can give an adequate 



470 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY! 

description of it. J^o word-painting can convey the deep, 
intense enthusiasm, the reverential attention, of that vast 
assembly, nor limner transfer to canvas their earnest, eager, 
awe-struck countenance. Though language were as subtile 
and flexible as thought, it still would be impossible to 
represent the full idea of the scene." " 

Such was Webster as an extemporaneous speaker. Such 
are the possibilities of the extemporaneous method. Such is 
a specimen of the " thin liquid flow " — of the " extemporane- 
ous dribble " — to which this mode of speaking is so sure to 
run ! Mr. Webster had not a scrap of manuscript before 
him ; he had not a line written and committed to memory ; 
and yet, it is not only his master-piece — his oration for the 
crown — but the ablest speech ever made on this continent. 
Think of Daniel Webster, at this crisis, surrounded by a 
dense crowd of his countrymen, eager to see him tower above 
all opposition, or hopeful to behold him quivering in the dust, 
standing up, manuscript in hand, reading his defence ! And 
yet our critic would have us believe that the extemporaneous 
method is fit only for " babes," it not being powerful enough 
for the " stomachs of men." But this was never said, so far 
as I know, of the extemporaneous discourses of the orators 
of our federal senate; and I am sure this speech of Mr. 
Webster has generally been considered quite strong enough 
for the stomach of Mr. Hayne ! 

It will be said, I am aware, that pleading at the bar, and 
addressing senates, are not preaching. This is very true ; 
but the art of speaking is the same, wherever it is employed ; 
and it is well known, that the extemporaneous method has 
had as lofty triumphs in the cause of religion as in any other 
cause. Our examples, it is also granted, have been taken 
from the modern pulpit ; but the same results would have 
been reached, had the appeal been made to the preaching of 



March's Reminiscences of Congress, pp. 132-148. 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 471 

the apostolic age. That was the age when the foundations of 
the Church were laid. It was not an age of mere " exhorta- 
tion," but an age set apart " for doctrine, for correction, for 
instruction in righteousness," if there ever was such an age 
since the beginning of the world. That, certainly, cannot be 
denied ; for every part of Christianity — doctrines, discipline 
and worship — was then to be newly inculcated upon man- 
kind ; and now let us look at the practice of the great teach- 
ers of Christianity in the day and hour of its origin. Jesus 
of Nazareth gave to the world the elements of the new 
religion. Did he read, or did he utter without manuscript, 
the Sermon on the Mount ? St. Peter was the first of men 
that acknowledged Christ. Did he read, or did he deliver 
from his heart, the first recorded sermon of the Apostles of 
our Lord? St. Stephen was the first of the early non- 
apostolic preachers, a man mighty in the scriptures, and 
" filled with the spirit of his work." Did he read, or did he 
speak " as he was moved upon," when he made the first 
defence of Christianity before the highest legal and ecclesi- 
astical tribunal of his nation ? St. Paul was the chief of the 
apostles, learned in all the knowledge of his day, a man " of 
the sturdy pen," as much as he was " of the nimble tongue." 
Which did his judgment lead him to employ, when "he 
reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to 
come" — the subjects, according to our critic, so unfit for an 
extemporaneous speaker — before the governor of the land ? 
Was it a written sermon, read from the manuscript, that 
shook that royal assembly and made Felix tremble ? What 
was the method of that prince of the apostles, wherever he 
went, from Damascus to Iconium, and from Iconium to 
Athens ? If you wish to see the absurdity of the reading 
method, think of St. Paul, full of his mission, overflowing 
with zeal, burning with the love of his race, sitting down 
in his library, with his eyes set upon the ceiling, as Quinti- 
lian would say, or twisting and writhing over his parchment, 



472 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY*. 

struggling in the work of composition, like a modern sermon- 
writer, resolved to appear before an audience at Derbe, or 
Lystra, or Antioch, or Damascus, or Jerusalem, in a dis- 
course elaborate with all the unities of style, and finished 
to the utmost pitch of diction ! If you would behold any- 
thing still more absurd, think of St. Paul's standing up 
before the classic heathen of Thessalonica, or of Corinth, or 
of the Athenian capital itself, with the straight and finical 
manner of a modern sermon-reader, reading his perform- 
ance ! The angels would have wept, and the devils laughed, 
over such a folly ! Had this been the style of the apostolic 
preachers, of the founders of the Church of God on earth, 
who had as much place " for doctrine, for correction, for 
instruction in righteousness " as any clergyman of our day, 
the cause of religion would have been blotted out in the very 
moment of its origin. But they had higher wisdom ; and 
their successors followed their example, until, in the decline 
of the original fervor of the Church, words began to take the 
place of thoughts, and the glitter of style was offered to the 
world by those, whose loss of zeal had robbed them of this 
readiness of speech. 

Methodism, which has now lived out a century, has not 
yet lost the original fervor of heart, nor that practical expe- 
rience, which gave, and has continued to it, for nearly four 
generations, its oratorical preeminence among religious deno- 
minations. Liberal in its theology, and in its very nature, it 
could not be less than liberal also in its modes of preaching ; 
and it has, therefore, never confined itself to either one of the 
four methods of speaking. Both the Wesleys, before their 
conversion, wrote and read their sermons ; but this practice 
was almost entirely abandoned from the moment their hearts 
began to throb to the impetuous transports, to the resistless 
impulses, of a heartfelt religion. Whitefield, as has been 
seen, wrote out the substance of what he proposed to say, 
but depended upon the excitements of the moment for nearly 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 473 

everything particularly eloquent in his discourses. The suc- 
cessors of John Wesley have practiced the three modes of 
oratory — the extemporaneous, the premeditative, and the 
recitative ; but they have never, since the days of the 
founder, admitted the degenerate custom of reading sermons. 
For the first half century, their habit was almost exclusively 
what is popularly known as the extemporaneous ; and ever 
since, in times of great religious feeling, either with them- 
selves, or with the people, they have given but little atten- 
tion to the preparation of particular discourses, depending for 
success mainly upon a general habit of preparedness which 
comes to a man from reading the scriptures, from prayer, and 
from the influence of a deep and burning piety. These, with 
such helps as are furnished by a suitable education, are now 
the chief reliance of our preachers. It is sometimes said of 
them, as if it were a fault, that they do not prepare them- 
selves for the ministry like the clergymen of the sermon- 
reading denominations. The fact is admitted; but the 
philosophy of the fact is not understood without recurring to 
the fundamental ideas of Methodism as a system ; and when 
these ideas are clearly comprehended, it is no longer difficult 
to find a reason for this divergence, not only in preaching, 
but in the preparation to preach, between the reading and 
the preaching denominations. Clergymen who write their dis- 
courses out in full, for the purpose of reading them verbatim, 
do so for the reason that they aim at a very high standard 
of perfection as to the matter, arrangement, diction and 
pronunciation of their sermons ; as their theology requires a 
long settlement of pastors, two such sermons have to be 
thought out, studied out, and written out, every week ; and 
this, with the usual pastoral labor, is as much as the most 
rapid of men can do with any credit for their work. Indeed, 
it is more than any man can do, and do it well ; and the 
loftier a clergyman's views are of the standard of his profes- 
sion, the slower will be his work. A thoroughly educated 



474 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY! 

man, possessing all the taste and severity of self-criticism 
imparted by such an education, and conscious that a written 
performance from him must always be worthy of his pen, 
would not find an hour to throw away, if he had a month 
for the composition of a discourse, the substance of which, 
with its proper arrangement, could be excogitated thoroughly 
in half a day. Nearly the whole of his time, in fact — and it 
is the same, though for other reasons, with sermon-reading 
clergymen of less culture — is devoted to the mechanical labor 
of composition. It is even worse with the reciter of ser- 
mons ; for he not only has to write out his sermons, but 
commit them to memory, and practice them in private. All 
this extra labor is saved, however, by the man, who speaks 
from the impulses of his heart, or who has learned to dis- 
course from premeditation ; and the time thus redeemed 
from the mere druggery of writing, may be devoted to the 
work of general self-cultivation. 

The sermon-writer has no time for general study ; not an 
hour for wide and various reading ; scarcely a moment for a 
proper examination of the great topics of the day in which 
he lives. He does not live, indeed ; he writes. Writing is 
the beginning and the end of every day of every week of 
his mortal existence ; and his having little or no time for 
study makes it necessary that he should lay in a large stock 
of preparation before he begins the duties of his profession. 
But the speaking minister saves himself all this toil and loss 
of time. One day a week spent in vigorous thinking will 
give him all he needs of special preparation for his Sabbaths; 
and the time grows less, as his mind fills up, and his faculties 
obtain a greater accuracy, power, and readiness of action, 
by his habit of general reading and reflection. He has 
opportunity, too, for mixing in society, for feeling of the 
popular pulse, for learning the habits, the tastes, the virtues, 
the vices, in a word, the wants, of the people among whom 
he labors ; and this is the very best sort of particular prepa* 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



475 



ration for the pulpit. Every step he takes, is a step toward 
the acquisition of some new knowledge, while the writer is 
all the time pouring out. The speaker is constantly filling 
up, while the writer is running empty ; for the largest depo 
sitories of learning will ultimately be exhausted by such 
continual draughts; and the result is, that, at the age of fifty, 
the man of little prior preparation for the ministry has altoge- 
ther outstripped his cotemporary, who devoted ten or fifteen 
years in acquiring his professional education, but who has 
since had no time for keeping up a course of life-long mental 
cultivation. It is not true, however, that all non-manuscript 
ministers do actually spend the time saved from writing in 
the culture of their intellectual faculties. 1ST or do I think 
they do, as a general thing, employ half as much time this 
way as they ought ; but I am speaking of the possibilities 
of the two styles of pulpit labor ; and I do claim that, even 
as things are, the speaking ministry has always been, as a 
whole, more efficient, more able, more successful, more 
learned, indeed, than the writing and reading ministry. 
Their learning is less upon theories and systems of theology, 
more upon practical religion, practical life, and things per- 
taining to the current knowledge and condition of mankind. 
It is their ability, however, rather than their science, that 
has generally distinguished them. While the writing minis- 
ters have spent much time on the theory of doing, they have 
been acquiring the power to do. They do by the impulses 
of nature what the others seek to know how to do by art. 
They have thus always been efficient workmen ; their style 
of address has been the one which always has been, and 
always will be, while human nature remains as it is, not only 
the most approved by the precepts and practice of the great 
orators, but the most acceptable, the most popular, the most 
influential ; and it is precisely here, that is to be found one 
of the primary causes of their unparalleled success. The 
largest part of the ministry of Methodism, from the begin- 



476 



METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 



ning of its history to the ]3resent rnornent, have lived with 
such a daily sense of the nature and power of vital religion 
— have enjoyed such a fullness of that experience which con- 
stitutes the center and cii'ciunference of their cause — that, 
like the apostles, like the reformers, like all men overflowing 
with the spirit of their undertaking, they have been able to 
speak, and that with great energy and effect, without much 
special preparation at each occasion for speaking. A smaller 
part, but embracing the more able of her ministers, in addi- 
tion to this internal force, have been in the habit of making 
particular preparation for every important occasion, and 
some preparation for eveiy sermon, by a deep and thorough 
premeditation. A still smaller number, without losing sight 
of the power of a genuine experience, have practiced writing 
and recitation; but the effect produced by this sort of preach- 
ing has been so little, compared with the labor of prepara- 
tion, that it has never had more than now and then an 
individual to follow it. Of writing and reading exclusively, 
and for a lifetime, I believe there has never yet been an 
example within the entire range of Methodism. It cannot 
be denied, that many of the occupants of her pulpits have 
been men of less vital piety than the spirit and theory of the 
denomination call for ; it cannot be denied, that many have 
suffered from some ambition to shine in the pulpit with those 
graces which a weak faith falsely imagines to be impossi- 
ble without pre composition ; but there has never been so 
great a loss of the original feiwor of heartfelt piety, of a 
burning desire to save sinners by the j>roclarnation of the 
Gospel, as to have produced a single example of an exclusive 
and life-long reader of written sermons. "When such an 
example shall occur, if it ever does — which may God forbid ! 
— it will be regarded by the wise men of Methodism as a 
mark of her decline. ]STot that there is never an occasion, 
and a justifiable occasion, for the reading of a discourse from 
the pulpit. There may be occasions, too, which would justify 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



477 



the recitation of a particular discourse. But the nature of the 
work of propagating Christianity, and the wants of society, as 
well as the precepts of the science of oratory, and the practice 
of the great orators, have always demanded, and will always 
demand, that what is commonly called the extemporaneous 
method, which includes the spontaneous and the premedita- 
tive, shall be the rule among all ministers, who think more 
of saving the world than of inculcating theories of religion, 
and who are better pleased with the shouts of the redeemed 
than with the applause that follows the most compact and 
brilliant diction. Not only the loftiest oratory, but the 
largest success, has always attended upon the speaking 
ministry; not only Christianity in its infancy, but every 
revival of it since its first corruption, made its early and only 
advances under a speaking ministry ; and Methodism, there- 
fore, which is the latest revival and the recovery of the 
original ideal of this glorious work, has achieved its tri- 
umphs, and spread itself into if not over every quarter of 
the globe, by following that style of speaking which the 
science and art of oratory, in their profoundest productions 
and most illustrious examples, have always recognized as 
based on the nature of things and the natural tastes and 
judgment of mankind. 

4. It is a remark of Isaac Taylor, who has been referred to 
as a philosopher of no second-rate position, that Lady Hunt- 
ington, one of the earliest of the English Methodists, and a 
peeress of the realm, ought to have had the success of bring- 
ing the nobility of England under the influence of Method- 
ism, and through the agency of the higher classes of making- 
it the religion of the British population. He thinks the 
people of Great Britain were very much prepared for such a 
result ; and her influence, acting from above downward, 
could have readily accomplished the revolution. Such seems 
to be the opinion of Mr. Taylor ; but it must be regarded, I 
think, as an evidence of the possibility of a wise and pro- 



478 METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY I 

found man's falling into a fundamental error. This is not 
the course taken by revolutions. They do not begin at the 
upper stratum of society and descend to the lower strata. 
~No such revolution, either religious, or political, or social, is 
on record ; and, by going back to the starting-point of all 
modern revolutions — the introduction of Christianity into 
the world — the reader will see that the course pursued by 
unerring Wisdom, was directly opposite to the one sug- 
gested by Mr. Taylor. It matters not how exalted may be 
the individual inaugurating a revolution ; but his work will 
call him, first of all, to the masses of the world's population. 
It was so with Jesus, who, though the Son of God, found it 
essential to his enterprise to begin at the very bottom of 
society, taking upon himself, at the same time, the nature 
and sympathies of those for whom he labored. The apostles 
imbibed his spirit and followed his example ; this was the 
order of the work of evangelizing the race, until the Gospel 
seemed to triumph in the conversion of the Caesars ; and 
when, after long centuries of corruption, decline, and almost 
ruin, the spirit of reformation burst forth in the persons of 
Vigilantius, Huss, Jerome, and Martin Luther, a restoration 
of the original temper restored also the earliest order of the 
work of propagating the universal Gospel. Though a learned 
professor in a German university, and supported in his 
measures by the protection of his prince, Luther, neverthe- 
less, made his appeals, not only in his own person, but in the 
persons of his associates and helpers, directly to the body of 
the German people. The same thing was done by the 
reformers in nearly every country of continental Europe. 
Sweden, it is true, received the reformation through the 
palace of her monarch ; and this is now confessed to be the 
main reason why that kingdom has never been able to come 
to the full light of the Lutheran Reformation. In England, 
too, the movement took its origin with the crown, and, 
through an already established hierarchy, attempted to find 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



479 



its way to the masses of the population ; but every reader 
knows that the English Reformation has never passed beyond 
a sort of semi-popery, and has not to this day taken pos- 
session of the British nation. The aptest possible illustra- 
tion of this general principle, however, is to be found in the 
history of that very branch of Methodism, as compared with 
its sister branch, which gave occasion to the erroneous 
hypothesis of our philosopher. Lady Huntington was a per- 
son of the highest eminence in Great Britain ; her husband 
was one of the leading noblemen of that aristocratic country ; 
her father's house was celebrated among the proudest 
historic families of the kingdom ; her husband died and left 
her a fortune worthy of his name and kindred ; she inherited 
large estates from her own lordly ancestors ; her intellectual 
abilities and moral character had always been marked as 
far above the level of her high position ; her education had 
been attended to by her parents, and rendered extraordinary 
by her own exertions ; and with all these advantages, she 
was noted for her beauty of person, her engaging address, 
her sound discretion, and an enterprise of disposition from 
which her family and friends had always anticipated some- 
thing great. This personage, under the preaching of the 
Methodists, professed conversion, and was ever afterward 
confessed to be thoroughly and deeply pious. She made an 
entire consecration of herself, body, soul, and substance, to 
the cause and work of God. She devoted all her time and 
talents, and the whole of her vast property, to the very 
effort of diffusing true religion among the nobility of Great 
Britain. She employed Whitefield, Romaine, Venn, and 
many more of the most eloquent men of the world, to 
address congregations of the upper class called together at 
her several princely seats, and to enforce upon them an 
acceptance of that genuine experience which she herself sat 
there to recommend. These scenes were enacted, and 
reenacted, and that without intermission, all over the king- 



480 METHODISM IN KELATION TO CHRISTIANITY " 

dom for many years. She built preaching houses ; she 
erected and endowed schools and colleges ; she traveled 
incessantly over England ; she employed only learned and 
able men, such as could not fail to command the respect of 
their aristocratic auditors ; she did everything, she turned 
every stone, she left nothing unattempted, in her undertaking 
to bring the nobility of the land under the influence of that 
vital, practical, j)ersonal religion which she so richly enjoyed 
herself. But what was the result of all this effort ? Not a 
nobleman was ever converted by all this expenditure of labor 
and of means. Lord Chesterfield used to go and listen to her 
preachers, and then, as the representative of his class, go 
away and laugh over her eccentricity. His example was 
almost universally followed by those of his own order, only a 
few women ever giving themselves the trouble to look after 
the possibility of leading a religious life amidst the splendors of 
their class and the gayeties of court. Lady Huntington died 
poor and disappointed ; her cause has since dwindled to a 
point ; and that is the sad end of the last great attempt to 
revolutionize the world by beginning at the summit. 

Look, now, at her cotemporary, John Wesley, the founder 
and finisher of this work of God= He was a man of great 
abilities, intellectual and moral ; he had received a thorough 
training at the most learned of the English universities ; he 
had experienced the same work of grace by which Lady 
Huntington was rendered so industrious and devoted ; and 
he had commenced his enterprise of spreading true religion 
over England by preaching in the most noted of the parish 
churches, in which assembled the nobles and gentry of the 
land. Thus he might have continued to labor to the end of 
his days, and with as little fruit, probably, as ordinarily waits 
upon such a course of procedure, had not the wisdom of 
divine Providence shut the doors of the churches and 
cathedrals of Great Britain against him, and thrust him out 
to follow the example of his Master in preaching the Gospel 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



481 



to the poor. From that moment, Wesley acknowledged the 
auspices, and embraced the omen of his future work, trust- 
ing that the sign could not be sinister which called him to 
walk in such illustrious footsteps. He adopted the poor of 
the world as the body of his parish. He regulated his entire 
system, and the instruction imparted from his pulpits, to 
their capacities and wants. Like his Lord, he discouraged 
costly apparel, and the erection of costly houses of worship, 
and the establishment of all expensive customs, that wealth, 
and the wealthy classes, might not be essential to his success. 
He turned his attention from the few and fixed it upon the 
many ; he descended from the air, in which nothing but 
imaginary castles can be erected, and took his position on 
the solid ground, where he began at once to lay a foundation 
broad enough, and massive enough, to hold the whole 
human family. The people whom he gathered into his 
societies, in England and in the colonies, though without the 
advantages of wealth, education and position, had one quality 
in common with the proudest aristocracy of either land. 
They were Englishmen ; they belonged to the great Anglo- 
Saxon family ; tl.e blood of their race uan as pure in their 
veins as in those of the royal household ; and though now 
poor, now illiterate, now trampled under the feet of the rich 
and great, they had within them the Anglo-Saxon capacity 
for improvement. They possessed a physical prowess that 
no race of men could match ; their intellectual ability was of 
the highest order among the world's inhabitants, and their 
Anglo-Saxon energy, and enterprise, and power of purpose, 
were equal to any emergency that might happen. It was 
this description of men that John Wesley went out to 
gather. His success in gathering them, in the old country 
as well as in the new, surpassed all example ; and he at once 
began that work of social elevation among his people, which 
has since achieved such marvels, raising them to an equality, 
at least, with any rehgious body of the world. He found no 

21 



482 



METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY 



lords nor ladies among his adherents; he could count no 
gentlemen of great wealth and station ; but he had that 
which was far better — a race of people capable of anything 
he might point out to them as an object worthy of their en- 
deavor. He went to work, therefore, to educate and elevate 
his members ; he went to work to make what he had not 
found ; he went forward in the prosecution of a work, which, 
though strictly religious in itself, could not fail to raise the 
poor to wealth, the humble to rank, the illiterate to know- 
ledge, and the whole to their full share of national import- 
ance and social power. His success in this department of his 
Enterprise has been also wonderful. The great grand-child- 
ren of the Kingston colliers, of the Bristol laborers, and even 
of the hod-carriers of Cork and Dublin, are now the great 
manufacturers of Leeds and Manchester, the great ship-own- 
ers of Liverpool and London, the great citizens of the rural 
districts, as well as of the cities, having their mansions on the 
very soil where their ancestors were mobbed by the magis- 
trates for holding to that vital godliness, which has since 
made them the neighbors, if not the rivals, of the nobles. On 
this side of the Atlantic, from the same class of inhabitants, 
and under the same tuition, have sprung up, in the course of 
less than three generations, many of the greatest wealth, of 
the greatest enterprise in business, of the greatest material 
influence among the millions of this favored land. There 
have sprung from it, also, many educated men, many scholars 
of hio-h eminence, who are now wielding verv much of the 
literary sway that is working out the destinies of this conti- 
nent. There have sprung from it, too, men of great moral 
power, philanthropists in heart and life, whose exertions 
have been felt from one side to the other, and from ocean to 
ocean, of the Great Republic. From the lowest and hum- 
blest of its population, there have come up, indeed, men to 
sit in the legislative halls of the oldest of the States, to pre- 
side over the destinies as well as to lay the corner-stones of 



THE SECOND CAUSE OF ITS SUCCESS. 



483 



new republics, to represent the nation in foreign courts, to 
sit on the bench of the highest of our national tribunals, and 
even to hold the reins and guide the progress of this New 
World itself. " Seek first the kingdom of God and his 
righteousness," said Jesus, "and all these things shall be 
added to you ;" and Methodism has everywhere found it so. 
It has found it so, not by aiming its influences toward the 
high and great, but by concentrating its energies upon the 
welfare and elevation of the poor. The law of its progress 
has been to work from the bottom of the world upward ; 
and it has found this to be the only law of success in the 
improvement and elevation of the world. Society is a pyra- 
mid, which every now and then gets ruinous and tumbles 
down, or has to be demolished and reconstructed. Vain is 
the ambition of those builders, therefore, who devote all 
their care and labor upon the summit. The cap-stone to-day 
may lie among the foundation rocks to-morrow, or it may be 
thrown in with other rubbish to fill up the interior of the 
mighty fabric. At the apex may be seen to-day a polished 
stone, cut from a Bourbon quarry, which has supplied the 
material for the same point for ages, but to-morrow you 
behold a new structure, built up from the demolition of the 
old one, and at the top a new stone marked Corsica, hitherto 
unknown to the most experienced workmen. Thus change- 
able, society has ever been. It is not only a pyramid, but a 
pyramid of human beings, of " living stones," which, when 
quarried, squared, and chiseled, find their own places in the 
ever-growing, ever-changing, never fixed and finished struc- 
ture. He, therefore, does the most in the reerection of the 
social fabric, in the ever-recurring reconstruction of the 
world, who has opened the largest quarry, who supplies the 
largest amount of suitable material, whose skill is equal to 
the demands of any and every elevation of the structure, but 
who remembers, notwithstanding, in everything he does, 
that every part of the work, from the top-stone down, de- 



48tt METHODISM IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY. 



pends at last for its stability and permanence upon the broad 
and all-comprehending base." 

Is ot a tear is therefore to be shed over the rejection of 
John Wesley by the higher classes and established powers 
of the mother country. "Not a sigh is to be heaved over the 
like beginning of his cause on this continent. He had that 
in him which made him a force which no earthly influences 
could suppress. He had that in him which made him the 
type of the enterprise which he had ventured to undertake. 
The very center of his soul, and everything within him, was 
possessed, occupied, and controlled by that personal experi- 
ence, by that vital piety, which has since become the center 
and circumference of his system of producing, preserving 
and propagating the original ideal of Christianity, the Gospel 
of universal love ; and his friends on both sides of the ocean, 
and in every land, as well as the world itself, may witness in 
the matter and manner of his work the law, as I believe, of 
all similar prosperity in spreading the influences and power 
of the religion of the Son of God. 

25 If any one wishes to see the mutability of this social pyramid demon- 
strated, let him read the recent work of Sir Bernard Burke, on the English 
Families of Noble Blood, in which he shows, that many of the most nota- 
ble families in the days of the Tudors, and of the Stuarts, are now extinct ; 
that there are butchers and toll-gathers in England, who have descended 
in a direct line from the House of Lancaster ; and that there are others to 
be found mending shoes and burying the dead for their livelihood, in 
whose veins runs the royal blood of all the Plantagenets ! 



CHAPTER VHL 



METHODISM THE RECOVERY OP THE IDEAL OP RELIGIOUS 
LIFE AXD •WORSHIP. 

Having traced the natural history of that personal experi- 
ence which consists of universal love, and seen it grow into a 
doctrine, and into a system of self-propagation, consistent with 
Scripture and after the ideal of original Christianity, the next 
and last thing is to witness how it creates to itself, and for 
its own benefit and progress, a system of religious worship, 
which stands co-equal in importance with its doctrine and 
discipline as a means of spreading the influence and power of 
our religion. The worship of a people, in fact, is not only 
one of the three cardinal elements of their profession, and one 
of the three forces always at work in propagating that pro- 
fession, but the result and exponent of the other two ; for it 
is in their public and private worship that is to be beheld,- at 
all times, the exact religious character and condition of any 
church, and, indeed, of every congregation ; and it is there- 
fore to this point, that the thoughtful reader will look most 
intently, and with the greatest interest, in searching out the 
causes of the success of that particular movement, whose 
philosophy I am endeavoring to develop. 

We are told in classic story, that when the Roman pro- 
consul, Flaminius, had defeated the Macedonians under King 
Philip, he proclaimed personal liberty to every inhabitant of 
Greece, and that the Greeks, who had assembled in the 
Roman camp in great numbers, as soon as they heard and 
comprehended the import of the unexpected proclamation, 

4S5 



486 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



raised such a shout as to stun the birds of the air flying over 
the spot, and to cause them to fall down dead upon the 
ground. The shout was at once taken up by the nearest 
cities of the redeemed nation, and thence echoed from valley 
to valley, and from mountain-top to mountain-top, till the 
whole land reverberated with the flying joy ; and the account 
of the event concludes with the declaration, that the voice of 
the exulting population was heard and recognized many 
miles at sea. 

Human gratitude, when once aroused, is certainly a very 
beautiful and powerful principle. Let a great benefit be con- 
ferred; let the source of that benefit be clearly seen; let 
there be no doubt respecting its origin and object ; and if 
there is not a response in some degree proportioned to the 
blessing, then the proof of extreme depravity, in that case, 
is very obvious. When Hezekiah was informed by the pro- 
phet that God was about to rebuke the malady by which he 
was plainly dying, and to restore him to life and health, he 
exclaimed : " What is the sign that I should go up into the 
house of the Lord ?" So it happened, at another time, with 
a large body of the Jewish people. They had been carried 
into captivity by the King of Babylon ; their city and temple 
had been demolished ; but, after years of sorrow in a foreign 
land, Cyrus had restored them to their native country, and 
permitted them to rebuild what had been so utterly destroyed. 
This grant, they saw at once, was the work of an overruling 
Providence ; their prophet had foretold them of the heavenly 
design; and now, when gathered upon the blackened ruins 
of their capital, with the decree of restoration and recon- 
struction in their hands, they would not lift a finger, they 
would not raise a stone, till they had first of all erected an 
altar of thanksgiving, and revived the true worship of their 
God. Around that smoking pile the redeemed population 
stood, looking upon the sacrificial offerings, and singing the 
psalm composed expressly for the occasion : " What shall I 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



487 



render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me ? I 
will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the 
Lord : I will pay my vows nnto the Lord, now, in the pre- 
sence of all his people." Several centuries afterward, a 
couple of the messengers of Christ, heralds of the new and 
glorious Gospel, met a poor fellow-mortal, lame from his 
birth, at one of the gates of the temple thus restored. He 
was carried there every day by his friends, that he might 
receive alms of those who went in to worship. Among other 
worshipers, Peter and John one day jvere about to pass 
through the gate, when their afflicted countryman asked 
assistance of them. The two apostles fastened their eyes 
upon him, and Peter said : " Silver and gold have I none, 
but such as I have give I unto thee : in the name of Jesus 
Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk;" and the account goes 
on to say, that the Apostle took him by the right hand and 
lifted him up, and that " his feet and ankle bones received 
strength." Then followed what so naturally proceeds from 
a grateful heart. The poor man felt conscious of his restora- 
tion to health and strength ; he could not doubt by whose 
power he had been restored ; for the name of Jesus had been 
particularly invoked ; and, therefore, " he, leaping up, stood 
and walked, and entered with them into the temple, ivalking 
and leaping, and praising God." It is toward God, indeed, 
that every man's heart immediately turns, as soon as it be- 
comes conscious of that inward experience which God only 
can bestow. The moment the work is accomplished, and the 
soul recognizes the proof of its accomplishment, it beholds 
everything in nature giving thanks to God, and it begins to 
exclaim: "What shall I render unto the Lord for all his 
benefits toward And this feeling, which is always 

a part of a genuine work of grace, is the foundation of all 
religious worship. It not only gives existence, but form and 
fashion, to all worship. The religious services of a people, 
public, private, social, will always correspond exactly to the 



4-88 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



amount and character of their personal religion. If they 
have no religion, nor the tradition of any, they will have no 
worship ; if they have some, but with a feeble consciousness 
of its source and value, their worship may be sonorous and 
showy, but it will be as certainly shallow, heartless, and in- 
significant ; if they have deep and fervent piety, accompanied 
with a strong realization of the author of their spiritual state, 
they will have a worship at once direct, earnest, and even 
fervent, though it will also be, at the same time, very 
simple. 1 

So much we are taught by the philosophy of the subject ; 
and we are brought to the same conclusion by the ample 
details of history. The worship of God is as old as the race ; 
for it began on earth with our first parents in the garden ; 
and, though interrupted by the fall, it was restored by Abel 
and the sons of Seth. It was practiced by all the patriarchs 
to the time of Abraham, who, as the called of God, every- 
where built altars, and offered sacrifices, and poured out his 
heart in grateful returns for the work which had been 
wrought within him. The household of Abraham was the 
Church of God on earth ; not only was the patriarch himself 
a man of great devotion, but his wife, his son Isaac, and 

i The old classic philosophers speak in this strain of the origin and obli- 
gation of divine worship. Plato declares " personal piety to be the 
greatest of the virtues." Aristotle says that " it is madness to despise 
God and religion." Pythagoras laid down rules for the observance of 
religious worship, saying, that " it should be performed seriously and with 
great attention of mind, and not by the by, or by chance." See Plut. in 
Numa, Cicero's de Legibus, Lib. ii., and the Aur. Carm. 49, of Pythagoras. 
Even Hobbs (Leviathan, chap. 12), though embracing views destructive to 
Christianity, agreed with the philosophers of antiquity in making religion, 
and religious adoration *a necessity of our nature : " Seeing there are no 
signs," says he, " nor fruit of religion but in man only, there is no cause 
to doubt but that the seed of religion is also only in man, and consisteth 
in some peculiar quality, or at least in some eminent degree thereof, not 
to be found in other living creatures." 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AJ^D WORSHIP. 



4S9 



even his servants, were persons who joined him heartily in 
the religions services handed down to him from the begin- 
ning of the world. His son and grandson, Isaac and Jacob, 
followed his example, and kept the worship of their ancestral 
church unadulterated by any of the corruptions of the exter- 
nal world. By the good providence of God, Joseph was sent 
into Egypt to open the way and prepare a place for the 
immigration of Israel to that land of safety, where, as ser- 
vants of the monarch, though tasked with the severities of 
labor, they enjoyed the freedom of religious worship ; and 
thus, during their four centuries of expatriation and of 
bondage, they maintained the doctrine, the discipline, and 
the worship of the church of Abraham, of Abel, and of Seth, 
in their original directness, earnestness, and simplicity of 
character. They worshipped God according to their expe- 
rience and knowledge of him ; and as their experience was 
considerably enlarged by the events of their redemption 
under Moses from the hands of their oppressors, so their ser- 
vices became at once more zealous, while the simplicity of 
them was in no way impaired. No sooner had the flying 
people of God passed through the sea, than the itinerating 
Church of the Highest celebrated the event by a general 
assembly of the nation around a common altar, by thanks- 
giving and prayer, by mutual congratulations and exhorta- 
tions, and by pseans of victory, prepared expressly for the 
moment : " Then sung Moses and the children of Israel this 
song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, ' I will sing unto the 
Lord, for lie hath triumphed gloriously : the horse and his 
rider hath he thrown into the sea.' " And Miriam the pro- 
phetess, sister of the two leaders of the people, standing 
opposite to the male members of the great congregation, 
with the women of the tribes, answered the triumphal shout : 
" Sing ye to the Lord ; for he hath triumphed gloriously ; 
the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea !" But, 
in addition to the simple worship of the heart, as it had been 

21* 



490 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



practiced from the days of Abel, Moses was directed to en- 
join upon the chosen people a system of services, the ruling 
object of which was to prefigure the coming, and character, 
and mission of the promised Redeemer of mankind. These 
prophetic services must be carefully distinguished from the 
ordinary religious worship of the Jews. This was brief, 
simple, and expressive of a great earnestness of genuine 
devotion. That was complicated, lengthy, imposing, but full 
of meaning, and indicative of strong faith in the coming of a 
national, if not a general, Saviour. This, as the proper 
homage of every living man to God, in view of his character, 
and of his relations and acts toward the worshipers, was to 
be perpetual. That looked only to a future event, which, 
when passed, would leave no significance to ceremonies, 
whose meaning and sole purpose had been fulfilled. This 
might be performed anywhere, in the tabernacle of the wild- 
erness, in the temple of the capital of the nation, or at the 
homes and firesides of the people, in their several families, or 
at some common place of neighborhood congregation, called 
a synagogue, where the simple worship of God — the reading 
of his Word, the hymning of his praise, the offering up of 
prayer and supplication, the exhortation and instruction of 
each other in religious things — was practiced. That, on 
the other hand, could be observed only within the typical 
tabernacle or temple, at stated seasons, and in behalf of the 
people, by persons expressly appointed to perform these rites 
and stand between the population and their God. In the one 
service, every man was his own priest, and the priest of his 
own family, having the privilege of coming directly to the 
Father, through the merits of the promised Son, not only in 
his own behalf, but" in the behalf also of his relatives, his 
neighbors, and his friends. In the other service, there was a 
threefold ministry, consisting of the high priest, the priests, 
and the Levites, who represented the condition and wants of 
the nation to God, and the promises of God to the nation, 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



491 



the whole being figurative of the wants and condition of the 
world, and of the divine plan of offering salvation to the race 
through the sacrificial death of his only-begotten Son. The 
one service, which was the offering of the heart to God, as a 
grateful return for that heart-felt experience, which is received 
through faith in Christ before as well as since his advent, 
must be essentially the same under all dispensations and in 
all ages ; it must be perpetual and unchangeable, not only 
through the cycles of time, and during the continuance of 
this world, but pass onward into eternity, and remain un- 
altered and unalterable ; for it is by this, and in this, that 
God's will is to be " done on earth as it is in heaven." The 
other service lost its significance by the coming of the Mes- 
siah ; its continuance thereafter would have been a falsehood 
and not a truth ; as established by the express intervention 
of the Almighty, it could not be providentially suffered to 
remain without casting some shadow of reproach upon its 
Author ; but the Jews, blinded as a nation by their sins, 
clung to it with a characteristic pertinacity; and so, the 
temple (where only it could be performed) was demolished, 
the people, who might otherwise have rebuilt it, were scat- 
tered as by a whirlwind into every quarter of the globe, and 
their typical worship thus passed away forever ! 

This is certainly a correct account, according to the Scrip- 
tures, of the two-fold worship of the pre-Messiatic Church of 
God ; and no one need to be confused in his opinions of it by 
any similar ceremonies among the gentile nations of ancient 
and of modern times. It has been often said, that the 
heathen nations have always had their temples, their sacrifices, 
their priesthood, and their worship ; some have undertaken 
to derive the Jewish system from the pagan, as if Moses had 
learned all he taught of the Egyptians, who were also the 
instructors of other countries ; but all such hostility to the 
truth is as illiterate in respect to learning, as it is shallow in 
its logic. These skeptical writers seem to forget, or wish 



492 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



their readers to forget, that the Church and the true worship 
of God are not only older than Moses, but older than the 
Egyptians, and older than the oldest of pagan nations. Not 
only Abel and Seth, the progenitors of the patriarchal 
family, whose history is avowedly written out by Moses, but 
Cain, also, the father of the earliest of the unbelieving 
nations, whose condition and deeds are referred to in 
Scripture only when they happen to be for the moment con- 
nected with the chosen people, alike erected altars, offered 
sacrifices, and performed religious rites and ceremonies. The 
forms of service, according to the Mosaic record, were at 
first the same among the believers and unbelievers, but, in 
substance, their respective worships diverged from their 
very origin. On the day of the fall, and in the very act of 
condemnation, God gave the jn-omise of a future Redeemer, 
by whose death the offspring of Adam, through faith, might 
be individually and iiniversally restored. He there and then, 
too, without the shadow of a doubt, ordained that that 
vicarious sacrifice should be typified, and thus kept in mind, 
by the offering of lambs upon altars erected for the purpose 
until the promised Redeemer should a]>pear. Abel, and all 
those believing and trusting in the promise, erected an altar, 
and laid upon it the firstlings of their flocks, thereby showing 
their reception of the system of salvation which had been 
revealed to them of God. Cain and his company, on the 
other hand, offered upon another altar only the bloodless 
fruits of the field, thus indicating that they had no confidence 
in the restoration of the race to life by the death of any 
future member of that race. Here began the separation of 
the believing family of the patriarchs and the unbelieving 
notions of the world ; and though the punishment of Cain, 
and the recollection of it, may have caused him and his 
descendants to adopt the substance of the patriarchal wor- 
ship, they were essentially a wicked generation, their hearts 
all the while inclining them to evil, and to a forgetfulness of 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



493 



the promises and fidelity of God. Corruption, therefore, was 
always with them more easy than obedience to the simple 
truth. They were a rejected and punished people; they had 
no gratitude to God, as they had not received his offered 
mercy; and, consequently, their so-called religious proceed- 
ings, at their high altars, in their consecrated groves, and in 
their gorgeous temples, were, at the first and ever afterward, 
nothing but a mockery. Their worship was a mockery in 
the days of Abel, and of Seth, when " men began to call 
upon the name of the Lord ;" it was a mockery, a growing 
mockery, from that day to the day when the world was 
drowned ; and it continued to be a mockery, ever becoming 
worse, till the establishment of the oriental pagan nations, 
whose particular histories and speculations were severally 
incorporated into their religious ceremonies, which, neverthe- 
less, still embodied the traditionary rites coming down to 
them from the very gates of Eden. The germ of the two 
systems, of the believers and of the unbelievers, was the 
same ; but the believers maintained the purity and true sig- 
nificance of the original service, adding to it only what the 
Author of it ordered them to add, during the gradual 
development of his glorious plan of saving the world by the 
sacrificial death of Christ ; while the pagans, on the con- 
trary, looked not to God for any additional revelations, nor 
preserved the purity of what they had received, but " sought 
out many inventions." This is what the Scriptures them- 
selves declare upon the subject : " Lo, this only have I 
found," says Solomon, " that God hath made man upright, 
but they have sought out many inventions." Thus, the 
original nations of the world, the Egyptians, Chaldeans, 
Phenicians, Greeks, and Romans, as well as those less known 
peoples living beyond the verge of ancient history and nearly 
lost in the shade of their primeval barbarism, w r hile they all 
retained some common rites, which were to be traced to no 
origin but the appointment of God at the gate of paradise, at 



494 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



the time of the advent of Christ, had not only corrupted the 
original revelation of one God, multiplying him into as many 
deities as there were attributes in nature, but they had cor- 
rupted equally the true worship, invoking each god with 
rites adapted to his imaginary relations to mankind, and 
paying them all a homage, which, as witnessed in their 
temples, was marked by every possible significance except 
the right one. Remembering only, that the leading cere- 
mony of the traditional religion was typical, they devised 
and practiced an endless variety of symbolical liturgies ; 
their altars and temples were surprisingly varied in form and 
structure, and yet all beautiful and magnificent ; their priest- 
hood was learned, and stood out before the public in all the 
splendors of ranks, and robes, and a most showy ritual; their 
popular worship was abundantly gorgeous, but the thousand 
mysteries connected with their religions, which were also 
contrived and established on the basis of a symbolic original, 
embraced everything pompous, or striking, or demonstrative; 
their temples, the most massive and imposing structures to 
be found on earth, standing out upon their high places, or 
rising up in magnificence out of the deep shade of their 
sacred forests, were surrounded and filled with such statuary 
as has never since been seen, and covered, as to the interior, 
with paintings which have never been matched by subsequent 
ages of the most ambitious and industrious art. Every 
element of this pagan worship, and everything connected 
with it, was something created for the purpose of making a 
deep and lasting impression upon the senses. Not only did 
architecture rear for it her most costly and finished piles, and 
statuary cut for it her most life-resembling representatives of 
the departed good and great, and painting people its conse- 
crated walls with the almost breathing images of its ideal 
men and gods, but oratory devoted to it her most gifted 
efforts, and music adorned it w r ith her highest and richest 
melodies, and all the muses, and all the graces, and the 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



495 



utmost that the human imagination could achieve, combined 
to render it grand, mystical, and impressive. But, with ail 
this formal splendor and outward ostentation, it had no soul, 
no life, no religion, no real worship. It contained no per- 
sonal experience ; it suggested no repentance for sin, no 
renunciation of rice, no hungering and thirsting for moral 
reform ; it prompted to no searching of the heart, to no 
seeking after good, to nothing like real trust for restoration 
to the promises and interposition of an almighty power. 
The sum total of the universe was its supreme divinity ; the 
earth's surface was its dividing plane between the two hemi- 
spheres of creation ; above this plane, every star in the 
heavens, every element of nature, every power and attribute 
of the air, was a member of the great family of its superior 
gods ; below it, in the shadowy habitation of the dead, lay 
the Elysian groves and gardens of the blest, and the sorrow- 
ing regions of despair, which were presided over by an 
equally numerous generation of inferior deities ; on the plane 
itself, where living man resided, there were gods of the sea 
and of the land, everything flowing into the one — from the 
largest of earth's rivers to the smallest of her rills — and 
everything standing or lying upon the other — mountains, 
hills, rocks, caves, woods, and even solitary trees — had each 
its representative and guardian power. All time, as well as 
space, was divided off into periods of deified duration, the 
past, the present, and the future being deities ; the year, the 
seasons, the months, the days, and even the very hours, being- 
named and known as divinities ; and the entire cycle of eter- 
nity, itself divine, was crowded with successions, past and to 
come, of the historic and prophetic dynasties of gods. The 
products of time and space were gods. The animal, vege- 
table, and mineral departments of nature's productions were 
acknowledged as divine ; every moving and living thing, 
from the lion to the leek, from the lava of the laboring 
volcano to the particle of golden dust, was sacred ; and the 



496 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



human race itself, with all its depravity and sin, was apotheo- 
sized, rare examples of its virtue being dispatched at death 
to the upper regions, and remarkable specimens of its vice 
being consigned to the inferior world, to supply such 
vacancies as might occur, while those men of more moderate 
but still marked pretensions remained, after their decease, to 
be honored as the heroes and demi-gods of earth. Every 
object of the universe, indeed, was worshiped by the pagan 
nations. Their whole round world, their heaven, and earth, 
and hell, were full of deities, male and female ; their memories 
teemed, their imaginations were weighed down, with visions 
of gods and goddesses celestial, terrestrial and infernal ; and 
all these were to be worshiped, nay, were worshiped, with 
all the pomp and splendor, and with every variety of august 
ceremonial, within the scope of the human limey to conceive. 
Retaining just enough of the traditionary institution of sacra- 
ficial worship to give their ritual some resemblance to the 
patriarchal system, and helping out this similitude by bor- 
rowing a little from every new revelation to the Hebrews, 
whose customs were well known to every one of the leading 
nations of antiquity, it was nothing, after all, but a gorgeous 
corruption of the simple and beautiful ideal of religious 
worship, as always practiced, from Adam to Jesus, in the 
original Church of God. 

The pagan and the Hebrew liturgies contained, however, 
the common practice of offering up living animals upon their 
altars as an atonement for sin; this common practice was the 
divinely-apj^ointed index, for all the nations of the earth, 
pointing directly to the promised sacrifice of the Son of God 
for the transgressions of the world ; and when that final 
offering had been slain, there was then no longer a meaning 
in the typical sacrifices, whether among Jews or Greeks. 
Animal sacrifices, therefore, should everywhere and at once 
have ceased ; they would have ceased, had the nations, Jew 
and Gentile, retained the idea which those bloody rites were 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WOE SHIP. 



497 



instituted to proclaim ; and they did cease, in every part of 
thew orld, with all those who received Jesus as the person so 
long and so universally pointed out. With him, therefore, 
the whole typical system came to a natural termination ; he 
was the end of what was at first the only meaning of the 
pagan services ; and nothing was to remain of the majestic 
ritual of the patriarchal church, excepting that plain and sim- 
ple portion which consisted of the genuine and earnest wor- 
ship of the heart : " The hour cometh, and now is," said 
Jesus to the woman of Samaria, " when the true worshipers 
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." The several 
parts of this spiritual worship were clearly laid down in the 
example and precepts of our Lord : 1, He opened his work 
of bringing in a finished system of doctrine, discipline and 
worship, by consecrating himself in the devotional act of 
baptism • 2, He went into the synagogue of Nazareth on 
a certain Sabbath day, " as his custom was," and read to 
the people out of the word of God; 3, He devoted mach 
of his time to extemporaneous prayer, and gave to his disci- 
ples, upon their request, a form of common prayer • 4, 
He was in the habit of addressing himself orally to the 
people, delivering not only short sentences and parables, 
but continuous discourses ; he taught his doctrines in the 
temple, in the synagogues, on the summits of mountains, in 
the streets of villages and cities, by the sides of wells and of 
fountains, by the shores of the little inland seas of Palestine, 
on the bosom of those waters, in rural retreats of the wilder- 
ness, far from the noise and confusion of populous localities ; 
and he commanded as well as commissioned bis apostles to 
" go into all the world and pyreach the Gospel to every crea- 
ture ;" 5, In that memorable upper chamber, where the 
Church of God was completed, after partaking with his 
friends of the paschal feast, he brought in that correlative 
feast upo7i a Sacrifice known as the Lord's Supper, in which 
the substance of the word of God, both old and new, and the 



408 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



central idea of both dispensations of the one religion, are 
exactly and strikingly represented ; and 6, When all was 
finished, and the Founder of our faith was about to go out 
and deliver himself up to death, he and his apostles sang a 
hymn together, " making melody in their hearts," and thus 
literally laying the topstone of the glorious edifice with re- 
joicings. 2 

These, as established by Jesus himself, were the religious 
services of the apostolic Church. The Acts of the Apostles 
are fortunately in our hands ; and in those annals is to be 
found the most abundant evidence that every one of these 
six parts of public worship was recognized by these original 
representatives of Christ. They baptized; they read the 
scriptures ; they prayed, both privately and in company ; 
they addressed the people in discourses upon the subject of 
their religion ; they celebrated the Supper of our Lord ; and 
they sang the praises of God " in hymns and spiritual 
songs," thus uniting poetry and music in their worship. So 
far we walk on solid ground, because all these parts of the 
apostolic service are distinctly mentioned in the evangelic 
writings ; and they were also, with the exceptions only of 
the two sacraments, the parts of public service in the syna- 
gogues, where the spiritual portion of the Jewish worship 
was always separately practiced, and which Jesus and his 
apostles adopted and continued. The worship of the 
Church of Christ, and that of the Jewish temple, and that of 
the numerous synagogues, after taking out of them what 
was simply typical of a future Messiah, was substantially 
identical; and of the two Christian sacraments, baptism 
stood in the place of circumcision, and the supper supplied 
the vacancy made by the abolition of the Passover, neither 
of which rites could longer be kept up as tokens of the com- 

2 St. Augustine (August. Ep. 119, c. IS) defends the use of music as a part 
of divine worship by saying, " that we have the precept and example of 
Christ and his Apostles for singing in our assemblies.' 



OF RELIGIOUS LITE AND WORSHIP. 499 

ing Sacrifice, after it had been actually offered upon the 
Cross. Altering, therefore, what had to be altered to fit the 
reformed worship to the facts as they existed after the long 
symbolized Redeemer had appeared, Jesus took up and ren- 
dered perpetual the system of spiritual worship, which had 
been appointed to the first of the patriarchs, which had been 
handed down through all ages of the patriarchal and Jewish 
dispensations, and which was intended to be continued to the 
very end of time. 3 

Such being the original constitution of Christian worship, 
as established by Jesus and followed by his apostles, there is 
no account of any alteration of it till the time when the 
history of the Church is very exactly understood ; and the 
period between the apostles and Eusebius, the earliest of the 
church historians, is sufficiently illustrated, so far as this 
subject is concerned, by several passages from the most 
ancient of the Christian fathers. St. John was alive till near 
the beginning of the second century of the Christian era ; 
his lifetime may be looked upon as marking the limits of the 
apostolic period ; and in about fifty years from the day of 
his departure lived Justin Martyr, whose writings are still 
extant, and who gives quite a description of the Sunday 
services of the Church during the current and preceding 
generation. The first thing he mentions is the rite of bap- 
tism; and this was immediately followed by the administra- 

3 Buxtorf (De Synagog. Jud. edition of Basil, 1712) is my chief author- 
ity for this representation of the services of the Jewish synagogues. It 
has been a common supposition that these houses supplied the place of the 
temple to the people living in the rural parts of Palestine. But this is a 
mistake. The typical services could be performed only in the one tem- 
ple of the nation, while the spiritual worship could be attended to any- 
where, and was practiced by the people in their families, as well as in 
their synagogues. The reader will see how distinct this spiritual worship 
was always kept from the symbolic rites, by recollecting that there were 
nearly four hundred synagogues in the city of Jerusalem itself, at a time 
when the temple was standing, and just prior to the advent of Christ. 



500 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



tion of the Supper. " The persons to be baptized," he says, 
" believing what is taught by us, and professing their ability 
to live accordingly, are instructed to pray, and (fasting) to 
seek of God remission of their past sins, we praying and fasting 
with them ; they are then taken to a place where there is 
water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we 
were regenerated — in the name of the Father of the Uni- 
verse and the Lord God, of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and 
of the Holy Spirit ; they then receive the laving of water." 4 
Immediately after the ceremony of baptism came the cele- 
bration of the Supper, which, in all places possessed of a 
regular and established congregation, was a part of the 
morning services of every Sunday: "After this," says 
Justin, referring to the preceding rite of baptism, "the 
believer is brought to where those called brethren are assem- 
bled to make common prayer for themselves, and for the 
illuminated or baptized persons, and for all others every- 
where." 5 The old father then goes on to describe the 
manner of receiving the baptized to the sacramental table. 
Instead of being admitted to fellowship by the giving and 
taking of right hands, the candidate is received with what 
was at first known as the " holy kiss " and afterward as the 
" kiss of peace." He then took his position among the 
brethren, apart from the promiscuous congregation, when 
the elements were at once consecrated and distributed. The 
leading man of the congregation, whom Justin calls the 
" President of the brethren," took the bread and wine, and 
in some places water also, and offered over them a prayer 
and a benediction of "praise and glory to the Father of the 
Universe, through the name of the Son, and of the Holy 
Spirit." The bread and wine were then given to the com- 
municants by those called " deacons ;" and this was the end 
of the simple ceremony of the Lord's Supper at the middle 



4 Justin's Apology, i. 



6 Justin's Apology, i. 



/ 

OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 501 

of the second century, and within the lifetime of many, who 
might have been acquainted with some of the original 
apostles. 6 

Such is what the earliest Christian writer says in relation 
to the two only sacraments recognized in revelation ; and, in 
the same work, he makes a general statement of the Sunday 
services of the Christian congregations of his day, leaving 
out only these sacramental ceremonies, because he had pre- 
viously described them. As it is the first account we have 
of what was done in the public assemblies of the primitive 
church, immediately after the death of the apostles, the 
passage is exceedingly interesting and important. It runs as 
follows : " On the day of the Sun," says Justin, " as it is 
called (that is Sunday), there is a meeting together in one 
place of all who dwell in the cities, or in the country, and 
the Memoirs by the Apostles, or Writings of the Prophets, 
are read for a sufficient time. Then, when the reader has 
finished, the President makes an address, exhorting to an 
imitation of those good things. Afterward, we all rise 
together, and pray. [Here baptism was performed when 

6 In another place (eh. vi., p. 309) I have shown how persons were 
received into the apostolic church upon the simple profession of faith in 
Jesus Christ as their personal Redeemer; the reader will mark what Justin 
Martyr says upon this subject ; and he may also here add the testimony 
of one of the most learned of modern authors, who bases his statement 
upon an avowed examination of all antiquity upon the subject : " The 
truth is," says Beausobre, the author referred to, " that the first Christians 
had not the discipline which was afterward established, and did not dis- 
tinguish between the catechumens and the faithful. They preached the 
Gospel. They who embraced it and declared solemnly that they believed 
in Jesus Christ were baptized, and were admitted at once to the commu- 
nion of Christians. They passed from the society of the Gentiles, or that 
of the Jews, into the Christian Church, without any other ceremony than 
that of renouncing their errors, confessing Jesus Christ, and receiving bap- 
tism. v — Histoire de Manichee et du Manicheisme, t. ii., p. 124. This is 
precisely the course established and recommended by Mr. Wesley. 



502 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



there were candidates to receive it.] Then, as before 
related, prayer being ended, bread and wine and water are 
brought, and in like manner the President offers prayer and 
thanks, according to his ability, and the people express their 
assent by saying Amen. There is then a distribution made 
of those things over which thanks have been given to each 
one present, and a partaking of them, and a portion is sent 
to the absent by the deacons. And those who are affluent 
and are disposed, give, as each one chooses ; and the col- 
lection is deposited with the President; and with it he 
assists orphans and widows, those who on account of illness 
or any other cause are in want, those who are in bonds, 
strangers dwelling among us, and, in a word, takes care of 
all who have need." 7 

This, then, is a brief but sufficiently comprehensive account 
of the several parts of the religious worship of the original 
Church of Christ. It will be observed that the act of singing 
is the only one of the six parts established by Jesus and his 
apostles which the first of the fathers has omitted. Whether 
this^omission was from a slip of the memory at the moment 
of writing, or from some carelessness of the early copyists, 
it is not material to determine ; for it is distinctly stated by 
Pliny, in his celebrated letter to the Emperor Trajan 8 — the 

7 Justin's Apology, I. The old father tells us the reasons why the 
Christians met on Sunday for the celebration of their worship: " We meet 
together,' 1 says he, "on the day of the Sun, because that is the first day, 
when God, having wrought a change in darkness and matter, made the 
world, and because Jesus Christ, our Saviour, on that day rose from the 
dead ; for the day before that of Saturn they crucified him ; and the day 
after that of Saturn, which is the Day of the Sun, appearing to his apostles 
and disciples, he taught those things which we have delivered to you." 
The philosophic reader, besides gathering the information pertinent to the 
topic now in hand, will detect here the first recognition of the Gnostic 
corruption of Christianity, in the doctrine acknowledged by Justin of the 
preexistence, if not eternity, of matter/ 

8 Plin. Epist., lib. x , ep. 97. 



OF RELIGIOUS . LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



503 



earliest notice taken of the Christians by any pagan writer — 
that they " met together and sung hymns ;" and there is a 
Greek hymn still extant, to he found at the close of the 
writings of Clement of Alexandria, which, in the days of that 
old father, who was separated from the last of the apostles 
by less than a hundred years, was called ancient. It is 
written in the Greek language ; it opens with an apostrophe 
to Light ; but it is valuable only as marking the great anti- 
quity of singing as a prominent part of the early religious 
worship. Eusebius, also, the first historian of the Christians, 
mentions a work called Psalms and Hymns of the Brethren, 
which he says claimed to have been " written at the begin - 
ning." 9 Paul of Samosata, who was President or Bishop of 
the original Church of Antioch about half a century after 
the death of Clement of Alexandria, is noted in history for 
his attempt to reform the singing of his congregation ; he 
professed the desire to restore the hymns and the music of 
his church to their original simplicity ; and in this movement 
we see another proof of the very early use of this part of 
worship. Indeed, we now have the collections of hymns, in 
the Syriac language, as well as in good Latin translations, 
which were written by Bardesanes and his son Harmonius in 
the second century, soon after the death of the first of the 
fathers, Justin Martyr. Singing, therefore, notwithstanding 
the omission of this earliest of the Christian writers, must be 
set down as one of the customary services of the religious 
worship of the Church of the apostles ; and e^ery other of 
the six parts of their simple ritual is expressly mentioned by 
this unimpeachable authority. 10 But it is of yet greater 
consequence, in showing the simplicity of the original worship 

9 Euseb. Hist. Eccles., Lib. v. c. 28. 

10 In another place (Apology, p. 60, fol. Ed.) Justin Martyr mentions 
singing, but he ia not very definite in his reference ; his lack is supplied, 
however, by Tertulliar: ( De Virg. Velat., c. 17, and Ad Uxor., lib. ii., 
c. 8) who speaks very plainly upon the subject. 



504 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



of the Christian Church, that no rite, no ceremony, beside 
these six parts, is mentioned by this semi-apostolic author. 
Not a lisp of anything else comes to us from the practice of 
any congregation of Christians from the baptism of Jesus to 
the death of Justin, a period of more than a whole century, 
which is the pure and primitive period in the annals of our 
faith. It is certain, therefore, that the worship of the first 
Christians, given to them by their only Lord and Master, 
was, with the necessary transmutation of the two rites of 
circumcision and of the paschal feast into baptism and the 
Supper, a continuation of the spiritual portion of the Hebrew 
worship, which was handed down from the gate of Paradise, 
and which will remain till the earth itself, by the general 
diffusion of the Gospel, becomes a universal Eden. 11 

This original ritual, however, so beautiful and impressive 
for its simplicity, retained its purity only a little time after 
the primitive period I have mentioned. We find in the 
extant writings of Tertullian, who wrote at the beginning of 
the third century, and whose writings stand next in antiquity 
and in value to those of Justin Martyr, that the sacraments 
began to be tampered with during his generation. He tells 
us that honey and sweet milk were tasted by the candidates 
for baptism prior to the administration of the rite upon them. 
This was a Judaizing ceremony, indicating that the persons 
to be baptized were, by that act, just entering into the Christ- 
ian Church, a new Land of Promise, another Canaan " flow- 
ing Avith milk and honey." When baptized, they were also 
anointed with oil, after the Jewish custom of consecrating 

11 Dr. Schaff (Hist. Christ. Church, pp. 119-122) reckons confession as 
one of the distinct parts of the original Christian worship, but on no 
authority earlier than the first of the Romanizing writers. See the recent 
origin of confession established by Bishop Stillingfleet, Origines Britan- 
uicse, p. 239. Dr. ShafF, who was misled in this particular by the customs 
of his native land, in every other respect confirms the statement I have 
made on the credit of the New Testament and of the earliest writers. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



505 



priests, as if every Christian was to be literally a priest him- 
self, according to the figurative description of the prophet. 
This tendency to pattern after the customs of the Jews, 
which had caused the first general council at Jerusalem in 
the days of the apostles, and which it was supposed had 
been rooted out by the influence of Peter and of Paul, still 
remained. Peter had been commanded in a vision to give 
up all his Jewish notions, and Paul had been called to from 
heaven to pay no regard to the obsolete ceremonials of his 
fathers, but to go out as the particular apostle to the Gen- 
tiles, binding no burdens upon them but the easy yoke of 
the two Christian sacraments, and the other four parts of the 
spiritual worship which had been given to the Christians by 
the example and teachings of their Redeemer. But these 
two apostles, as well as all their brethren, when preaching 
the Gospel, whether in Palestine or out of it, were compelled 
to resort mainly to the synagogues for their congregations 
and their opportunities of speaking; and the consequence 
was, that, for a century and more after the resurrection, the 
conversions to Christianity were mainly among the Jews. 
The Jewish influence was therefore supreme in the post- 
apostolic Church ; and as it could not be expected that their 
national attachments, and the force of their education, could 
be broken in a moment, so it is nothing surprising that these 
Jewish converts should sway the successors of the apostles 
very strongly toward the more complicated and imposing 
ritual of their ancestral religion. In the country at large, 
they would not at first think of having anything more august 
than the service of the synagogues they had left ; for they 
had always been accustomed to simple rites in their popular 
convocations ; but they all remembered that, at the center of 
their native land, there had stood one structure of great 
magnificence, where a regularly-appointed priesthood per- 
formed the pompous ritual of their fathers ; and it was 
natural, therefore, for them to desire to see, at some political 

22 



506 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



center of the region where they dwelt, some fabric of more 
than ordinary proportions, and a worship of metropolitan 
magnificence. Metropolitan churches soon grew up; and 
their ritual at once began to expand from the beautiful sim- 
plicity of the primitive age into something resembling the 
grandeur of the temple service. The experiment proved a 
success. It not only pleased the Jews, but it was equally 
satisfactory to the pagans, who had before complained of the 
want of houses of worship and of a striking ritual among the 
Christians, and whose taste had been educated to the most 
ostentatious rites ; and, as concessions had thus been made 
to the prejudices of the Hebrew mind, the pagan converts 
could see no reasons why their prejudices should not also be 
consulted. They were consulted. The Christians, thinking 
that there could be no harm in adopting and spiritualizing 
some of the more innocent and attractive ceremonies of the 
Greek and Roman temples, especially for the purpose of 
rendering their holy religion the more acceptable to their 
pagan countrymen, thus bowed their knee to Baal, and 
opened their doors to the influx of corruption and supersti- 
tion. As they had two services a day, one early in the 
morning, the other late in the afternoon, after the custom of 
both Jews and pagans, so they began to call these services 
the sacraficia matutina and the sacraficia vespertine 
the very phrases used for the heathen and Jewish temple 
worship. 12 But they stopped not with the use of words. 
They proceeded to the adoption of Jewish and pagan ideas. 
~Not content with the symbolic rites of baptism and the sup- 
per, by the one of which they made profession of their new 
birth upon entering into the household of faith, and by the 
other kept up a recollection of the means of that inward 
regeneration, they multiplied the sacraments successively 

12 Bishop Stillingfieet (Origines Britannicae, p. 233) shows that these 
titles began to be useel at a very early age. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



507 



into four, five, and seven. The reading of the word of God 
was put into the hands of professional elocutionists and made 
as striking as possible to the senses by the use of a great 
deal of ceremony in approaching and opening the sacred 
books. Prayer, which at the first had been mainly extempo- 
raneous, with occasional forms for the more solemn occasions 
of the common worship, was made altogether in common, and 
in set compositions, whose chief trait was their endless repe- 
titions. The sacrament of the Supper, so simple in the hands 
of its Institute, and of his immediate successors, became a 
ceremony of vast proportions, made up of readings, and 
prayers, and benedictions, and responses, and genuflections, 
all in imitation of the obsolete grandeur of the Jewish and 
pagan temples, which, in more senses than one, might well 
be called a mass. The singing, which, according to every 
account left of it from the letter of Pliny to the last of the old 
hymnists, was originally congregational, was transformed into 
a separate institution, and put into the keeping of a distinct 
class of church-goers, after the pattern of the choirs of 
Solomon and of some of the more august of the Roman and 
Greek temples. ~Nor did this long satisfy the corrupters of 
the Church. It was not enough for them to sing the psalms 
and hymns pertaining to the service. They must sing also 
the prayers and scripture lessons, the voice of the officiating 
president, now called a priest after the Jewish and pagan 
style, leading in the cantation of these portions of the worship, 
while the choir led off in the psalms, hymns and chants. So 
surely and steadily did this work of corruption go forward, 
that, at the period of the conversion of Constantine, the public 
worship of the Christians could scarcely be distinguished, in 
point of magnificence, from that of the heathen and Hebrew 
rituals ; and, to accommodate the more perfectly this ^showy 
liturgy, and to give it a theater for a more striking exhibi- 
tion, this first of the Christian emperors built metropolitan 
cathedrals, modeled very much after the pattern of the Jew- 



508 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



ish temple, at all of the central points of his vast dominions, 
in which the now angust rites of the Church, performed by 
robed and mitred priests, vied with the most gorgeous 
religious ceremonies which the world had ever witnessed. 

The inside walls of these edifices were covered with paint- 
ings of great art and beauty, representing the narratives and 
descriptions of the sacred history ; the niches of every part, 
within and without, were adorned with the plastic or chiseled 
effigies of departed saints ; the simple desk, where the Pre- 
sident had formerly held his station when reading the word 
or addressing his exhortations to the people, had now become 
an altar, where Christ was daily to be slain, and offered, and 
then eaten, in the communion service ; here, indeed, was the 
great attraction ; here were assembled all the sacred relics ; 
here were the emblematic lights and jrictures of the crucified 
Redeemer ; here sat the head of all the congregations of a 
province, covered with the sj)lendid trappings of his office, 
presiding over the ceremonies, and waited upon by numerous 
bands of ecclesiastics, clad in white robes, and bowing the 
knee at every turn of the dazzling and deafening pageant. 
The simplicity of Christ and his apostles, in a word, had 
passed away ; and the form of Romanism, with the germ of 
Avhat it afterward became, had already come to occupy its 
place. 13 

Christianity having in this way become the religion of the 
Roman empire, which was still nearly universal, and it having 
adapted itself to the political divisions of the realm, as well 
as to its hereditary tastes and prejudices, it stood prepared 

13 Mosheim, Cent, ii., pt. ii., ch. iv. All writers, except the Tractarians 
of Oxford, agree in showing, that every element of Romanism existed in 
the churches at the beginning of the fourth century ; and the Puseyites 
have not come to be acknowledged as reliable authority among scholars, 
either in England, or in this country. See also Bingham's Christ. Antiq. 
passim, and Isaac Taylor's Ancient Christianity, for a complete demonstra- 
tion of the early corruptions of the Church. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



509 



to rise or fall, to succeed or suffer, according to the vicissi- 
tudes of the general government ; and, therefore, when the 
empire was parted into the two grand sections of the Greek 
and Latin, and afterward into more numerous divisions by 
the breaking up of the Latin empire, the Church was com- 
pelled to divide and subdivide accordingly. Each of these 
divisions was left to its own intrinsic tendencies ; each de- 
veloped a character very much its own ; each had a destiny 
to achieve and a work to do ; and, therefore, in the further 
prosecution of this portion of my subject, I must follow for a 
moment the fortunes of each of the several general liturgies 
which sprung up out of this universal disintegration. By 
pursuing it attentively, the reader will not only refresh his 
memory with what every Christian ought to know, but will 
particularly see how much he owes to the modern spirit of 
the Reformation. 

I. The history of the Roman ritual, from the time of the par- 
tition of the empire, is exceedingly interesting and important. 
It is a very common supposition that the now current cere- 
monial of the Roman heresy, precisely as it now appears in 
the Breviary and Missal of their worship, is very ancient ; 
and the Roman writers, making as much as possible out of 
their great argument of being the only ancient denomination, 
lend all their influence to encourage this mistake. But the 
truth is, that, though the seeds of Popery are found 
in the church of the fourth century ; and though these 
seeds were constantly germinating and maturing from 
that early time to the division of the empire ; yet, the pre- 
sent constitution of religious worship among Roman Catho- 
lics grew up so slowly, that its present form may be looked 
upon as rather recent. It has been seen, for example, that 
Justin Martyr knew of but two sacraments, while the modern 
Church of Rome has seven. Until the Council of Laodicea, 
in the year 367, only portions of the Gospels and Epistles 



510 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



were read, while, in after times, not only all the canonical 
books of revelation, but the apocryphal also, were included 
in the service. ~No use was made of what is called the 
Apostles' Creed till the year 1014 ; and the Ave Maria was 
introduced into the Roman Breviary after the Tridentine 
Council, in 1550, by the command of Pius the Fifth. So 
with many other portions of the existing Roman seryice. 
The Alma Bedemptoris is acknowledged by Gavanti and 
Merari, among the ablest of modern ritualists, to have been 
the composition of one Hermannus Contractus in the year 
1054 ; and the Ave Regina, the Begina Cceli, the Salva 
Begina^ are to be found in no Breviary whatever before the 
year 1520. Baronius tells us that the Officium Parvum of the 
Virgin Mary was instituted by Peter Damianus in 1056 ; and 
this was not enjoined upon Roman Catholics till thirty years 
afterward, when it received the sanction of Urban the 
Second. The service of the mass itself was written by a 
private individual in the days of Gregory the Great, and not 
far from the year 585, when it was received and enjoined 
upon the Roman Church by that powerful pontiff. The cur- 
rent ritual of Rome is full of idolatrous invocations of the 
saints. Not one of these petitions, however, now recited by 
pious Romanists the world over, was ever heard of till a long 
time after Christianity became the national religion of the 
Roman empire under Constantine the Great. 14 

Whatever may have been the origin and history of the 
Roman ritual, however, there is no difference of opinion in 

14 Roman Catholic writers do not deny these facts ; they only conceal 
them from the public mind ; but the Tractarians of Oxford, whose enter- 
prise is to reform the universal church backward to the standard of the 
ante-Nicene Fathers, have found it within their plan to expose the recency 
of a large portion of the Roman ritual ; and the reader may profitably con- 
sult several of their publications, particularly their first and third volumes 
upon this interesting topic. Let him also consult Bp. StUlingfleet's Ori- 
gines Brit. pp. 220-244, and his Origines Sacra?, passim. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



511 



respect to its present forms, which have been multiplied till 
they now fill no less than four heavy duodecimo volumes. The 
work is called the Roinan Breviary, a word first employed 
for this purpose in the eleventh century ; it was compiled 
from several similar publications on the different parts of the 
Roman service, such as the Psalteria, the Homilaria, the 
Hymnaria^ and ordered to be used in all Roman Catholic 
congregations by Gregory the Seventh ; and though, as has 
been seen, numerous additions have since been made, this 
Gregorian Breviary, the production of the eleventh century, 
contains the substance of the Roman ritual for all possible 
occasions. Only a general idea of this vast system of wor- 
ship can be condensed into a paragraph of this chapter. The 
book consists of psalms, hymns, canticles, lessons and single 
texts of Scripture, quotations from the most noted of the 
ecclesiastical Roman writers, antiphons, verses and responses, 
sentences and collects. These different parts are woven into 
one general plan of worship, connected together by rubrics 
or introductions explanatory and directive, and illustrated by 
numerous historical foot-notes. The work seems, at the first 
inspection, exceedingly complicated, tangled, and even unin- 
telligible ; and the reader wonders how such a compilation, 
or any distinct part of it, could ever be brought into use 
among even a reading and thinking population. But by dili- 
gently studying its contents, the thread is finally discovered ; 
the design is comprehended ; and then it is seen that the 
contents are divided off into periods for any number of occa- 
sions, public, private, social, as well as ecclesiastical. There 
is to be found in it a set service for everything, from the 
secret devotion of a penitent to the consecration of a pontiff, 
which can occur to an individual, to a congregation, or to the 
Church universal. There is a service for every portion of the 
ecclesiastical year, which is cut up into exact sections, as if 
the sun and other heavenly bodies were faithful Roman 
Catholics and had nothing to do but to observe the order of 



512 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



this complex worship. The feasts and fasts have their sepa- 
rate services ; and these ferial days are so numerous, that it 
is difficult to find twenty-four hours together which do not 
embrace a solemnity of some description. There are services 
to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ; but these are 
comparatively very brief ; while those addressed to the 
Virgin Mary, to St. Ann her mother, and to the semi-deified 
prophets, apostles, martyrs-, saints, are as abundant as they 
are ostentatious. 

There are particular services in these volumes for every day 
of the year, and these daily devotions are divided into seven 
distinct portions, corresponding to the seven sub-divisions of 
the day made by the Roman Catholics. The day begins at 
evening, as it did with the Jews ; and there were at first only 
the three Jewish sub-divisions of the third, sixth, and ninth 
hours ; but the pagan system observed a more numerous dis- 
section of the day ; and Romanism ultimately surpassed all 
competition in this respect, by setting apart seven periods and 
seven religious ceremonies for every daily revolution of the 
earth. This seven-fold division is as follows : 1. Vespers, the 
first hour of the evening; 2. Compline, or bed-time; 3. 
Xocturns, or midnight ; 4. Prime, the first hour of morning ; 
5. The third hour of morning, or matins; 6. The sixth hour, 
or mid-day ; 7, The ninth hour, or afternoon. Romanists 
insist, I know, that the old Hebrew ritual obseiwed this same 
seven-fold division of the day ; for David declares : " Seven 
times a day do I praise thee, because of thy righteous judg- 
ments." They assert, too, that it is in honor of the seven 
days of creation, of the seven distinct petitions of our Lord's 
Prayer, of that Spirit which is revealed to us as seven-fold, 
and a memorial of the seven evil spirits against which the 
Scriptures give us warning. They pretend to say, also, that 
Jesus was born and raised from the dead at midnight; that 
at Prime (7 o'clock, a.m.) he was brought before Pilate*, 
that at the third hour (9 o'clock, a.m.) he was devoted to 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



513 



crucifixion ; that at the sixth hour (mid-day) he was cruci- 
fied ; that at the ninth, hour (3 o'clock, p.m.) he expired ; 
that at Vespers he was taken down from the cross, at which 
time, also, of the day before, he had eaten the passover, 
washed the feet of his disciples, and consecrated his holy 
supper ; and that at Compline, a corruption of completorium, 
he had endured the agony of the garden. They base this 
seven-fold division of their worship on certain facts related 
of the apostles. As Daniel had followed the custom of his 
fathers of "kneeling on his knees three times a day, and 
praying and giving thanks unto God," which order was 
always observed in the Jewish temples, so the apostles were 
often found there at the three daily services, which they 
thus perpetuated, according to the Breviary, in the Church 
of Christ. It was also, they continue, " at the third hour of 
the day," that the Holy Ghost came down upon them at, 
Pentecost. It was at the sixth hour that Peter " went up 
upon the house-top to pray," and saw the vision teaching 
him the catholicity of the Christian Church. It was at the 
ninth hour that " Peter and John went up together into the 
temple," it being " the hour of prayer." After the Saviour's 
departure, the apostles " continued with one accord in 
prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the 
mother of Jesus, and with his brethren ;" St. Paul exhorts 
believers " to pray without ceasing, in everything giving 
thanks ;" and on one occasion, at least, he and his friend 
Silas prayed in the middle of the night : " At midnight Paul 
and- Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God, and the prison- 
ers heard them." 

Insubstantial as are all these reasons for this seven-fold 
system of religious worship, drawn from a combination of 
Jewish customs and apostolic incidents, and not from any 
known instructions or practice of the apostolic Church, 
Romanism now everywhere, in theory at least, commands it. 
Practically, indeed, especially in Protestant countries, they 

22* 



514 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



satisfy the requirements or the Breviary by uniting the Noc- 
turns and Matins : so that the pious Romanist is not called 
from his warm bed at midnight ; but he has a double service 
to perform very early in the morning ; and from this time of 
the day till late in the evening, on all saint's days, and other 
ferial occasions, he is ordered to continue his devotions 
according to the forms and regulations of his ritual. Eoman 
Catholics, however, have a very convenient custom of dis- 
pensing with the greater part of every prescribed service ; 
it is generally thought sufficient for the worshiper to read 
over the first line or two of any office to obtain the benefit 
of the whole, and, if ever this is omitted, he has a ready way 
of escaping condemnation by going to the priest, who, for a 
fee, absolves the guilty party. On many occasions, never- 
theless, the entire service of the day is punctually performed; 
and there is no part of Romanism, in which its departure 
from the original simplicity of Christianity is more apparent, 
than in the lengthy, complicated and pompous ceremonial of 
its unabridged daily worship. The seven periods of the day 
and night are then accurately observed, and the seven ser- 
vices, with all their windings and variations, are fully read, 
sung and chanted. Every one of these seven performances, 
excepting Compline, begins with the Lord's prayer and the 
Ave Maria, said privately, to which the Creed is added be- 
fore Matins and Prime. After Compline come these three 
together. Every other service ends with the Lord's Prayer 
in private, unless another service immediately follows it. The 
audible portion of the daily service, beginning with Matins 
and closing with Compline, may be thus condensely, I might 
almost say, algebraically expressed : 

I. — Matins, or Night Service, aeter One a.m. 

INTRODUCTORY SERVICE. 

1. Every worshiper first signs himself with the cross. 

2. The priest says : " O Lord, open thou my lips." 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



515 



3. The people respond : " And my mouth shall show forth 
thy praise." 

4. Each person then signs his lips with the cross. 

5. Priest then says : " O God, make speed to save me." 

6. People respond : " O Lord make haste to help me." 

7. Each person then signs himself with the cross from the 
forehead to the breast. 

8. Then the priest repeats the doxology : " Glory be to 
the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost." 

9. And the people answer : " As it was in the beginning, 
is now, and ever shall be, Amen, Hallelujah." 

10. The priest : " Let us worship the Lord ;" 

11. After a pause it is added : " Our Maker." 

12. Then the 95th Psalm is read alternately by priest and 
people, the form, " Let us worship the Lord — Our Maker," 
being interpolated before the 3d and 8th verses and the lat- 
ter part of it after the 4th and 9th verses. 

13. Then follows a hymn, according to the day, which 
concludes the introduction. 

14. Then succeeds the main body of the service, which, if 
the day be Sunday, consists : 

a. Of the reading of thirteen Psalms, viz. the 1st, 2d, 3d, 
6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th. 

b. Of the reading of some other passages of Scripture, in 
three parts, appointed according to the time of the year. 

c. Of the reading of three more Psalms : viz. the 16th, 
17th, and 18th, entire. 

d. Of the reading of a passage from some Father of the 
Church in three parts. 

6. Of the reading of three more Psalms, viz. the 19th, 
20th, and 21st. 

f. Then a comment on some passage of the Gospel, in three 
parts or pauses, to signify the belief in the Holy Trinity. 

15. If the clay be any other day than Sunday, then the 
following is the order of the service : 



516 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



a. Monday — first, the reading of the following Psalms : 
the 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st, 32d, 33d, 34th, 35th, 36th, 
37th and 38th; and secondly, the reading of a passage from 
the Scriptures, or from one of the Fathers, in three parts as 
before mentioned. 

b. Tuesday — first, the reading of the following Psalms : 
the 39th, 40th, 41st, 42d, 44th, 45th, 46th, 47th, 48th, 49th, 
50th, and 52d; and secondly, the reading, as before, of a 
Scripture passage, or a passage from some Father. 

c. Wednesday — first, the reading of the following Psalms : 
the 53d, 55th, 56th, 57th, 58th, 59th, 60th, 61st, 62d, 64th, 
66th and 68th ; and secondly, a Scripture passage, or passage 
from some Father. 

d. Thursday — first, the reading of the 69th, 70th, 71 st, 
72d, 73d, 74th, 75th, 76th, 77th, 78th, 79th and 80th 
Psalms ; and secondly, of a Scripture passage, or selection 
from a Father. 

e. Friday— first, the 81st, 82d, 83d, 84th, 85th, 86th, 
87th, 88th, 89th, 94th, 96th, and 97th Psalms; and secondly, 
as before, the Scriptural or patristic passage. 

/. Saturday — the 98th, 99th 100th, (sometimes the 92d) 
101st, 102d, 103d, 104th, 105th, 106th, 107th, 108th, and 
109th Psalms ; and secondly, the reading of the select Scrip- 
ture, or the passage from some Father of the Church, in 
three separate portions. 

16. Then, on every day of the week, comes the Te Deum 
Lauclamus, chanted with the greatest possible effect. 

17. IsText follow what are called Lauds, which are sup- 
posed to precede the approach of morning twilight, begin- 
ning with the Invitation as before : 

Priest, " O God, make speed to save me ;" 

People, " O Lord, make haste to help me ;" 
when each person again signs himself with the cross from 
the forehead to the breast, after which comes the Gloria 
Patri as before — " Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and 



OF .RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



517 



to the Holy Ghost," with the response : " As it was in the 
beginning, is now, and ever shall, Amen, Hallelujah !" 

18. Then follow the reading of four Psalms and the song 
of Isaiah, Moses, Hannah, Habbakuk, or Hezekiah, accord- 
ing to the following condensed table : 

a. Sunday — Psalms 93d, 100th, 63d, 67th and the 148th, 
or the 150th, the whole divided into three parts by inserting 
the Song of the Three Hebrew Children. 

b. Monday requires the 51st, 5th, 63d, and 148th Psalms, 
with the Song of Isaiah. 

c. Tuesday, the 51st, 43d, 63d, and 148th Psalms, with the 
Song of Hezekiah. 

d. Wednesday, the 51st, 65th, 63d, and 148th Psalms, with 
the Song of Hannah. 

e. Thursday, the 51st, 90th, 63d, and 148th Psalms, with 
the Song of Moses. 

/. Friday, the 51st, 143d, 63d, and 148th Psalms, with the 
Song of Habakkuk. 

g. Saturday, the 51st, 92d, 63d, and 148th Psalms, with 
the Song of Moses. 

19. Between these various readings, there occur appointed 
lessons not here represented, as they could not be inserted 
without a too frequent subdivision of the regular order, and 
the consequent confusion of the reader of these pages. 

20. This service ends on all occasions, whether Sundays or 
week-days, with a Text or Capitulum, a Hymn, the Song of 
Zecharias, called Benedictus, several Collects, Invocations of 
Saints, and sentences following the hymn, and a concluding 
collect according to the season ! 

n. PEIilE, OK AT THE PlSIXG OF THE Su~N". 

1. All the Introductory Service's as above stated. 

2. A Hymn, which is the same for every day in the 
year. 



518 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



3. Then four Psalms, excepting on Saturdays, when there 
are only three. 

4. Then a part of the 119th Psalm in two parts, vv. 1-132, 
to which, on Saturdays, is added the Athanasian Creed. 

5. The service then proceeds with a Capitulum, or Text, 
explained or not, with the Lord's Prayer said privately, with 
a Confession of the Priest to the People, and in turn of the 
People to the Priest, with a mutual Absolution, with the 
reading of Scripture Sentences and a Collect — the same as is 
marked third in the English Prayer-Book — with a Lesson 
from the Book of Martyrs, with an Invocation of St. Mary 
and then of All the Saints, with more sentences and the 
Lord's Prayer, with another Collect — the same as is used in 
the English Church at the end of the Communion service — 
the whole concluding with a short lesson and select sentences 
of Scripture. 

III. — Third Hour, or Nine o'clock, a.m. 

1. Introductory service as before related. 

2. A Hymn, the same throughout the year. 

3. Reading of the 119th Psalm, w. 33-80, in three 
parts. 

4. Then a Text, with or without comment, and sentences 
following, with the Lord's Prayer, privately, concluding with 
the Collect for the day or week. 

IV. — Sixth Hour, or Mid-day. 

1. Introductory services as before. 

2. A Hymn, the same throughout the year. 

3. Reading of the 119th Psalm, w. 81-128. 

4. The Text, with or without comment, and sentences 
following, with the Lord's Prayer, privately, concluding with 
the Collect for the day or week. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



519 



Y. — Xtxth Hour, or Three o'clock, p.h. 

1. Introductory service as before. 

2. A Hymn, the same throughout the year. 

3. Reading of the 119th Psalm, w. 129-176, in three parts, 
thus reading the whole of this longest of the Psalms every 
day of the year. 

4. The Text, generally without comment, and sentences 
following, with the Lord's Prayer, privately, concluding with 
the Collect for the day or week. 

VI. — Vespers, or First Hour of Evening. 

1. Introductory service as before. 

2. Then five Psalms each day of the week, as follow : 

a. Sunday— Psalms 110th, 115th. 

b. Monday— Psalms 116th (in two parts), 117th, 120th, 
and 121st. 

e. Tuesday— Psalms 122d, 126th. 

d. Wednesday— Psalms 127th, 131st, 

e. Thursday— Psalms 132d, 133d, 135th, 136th, 137th. 
/. Friday— Psalms 138th, 142d. 

g. Saturday — Psalms 144th, 145th, 146th, and 147th (in 
two parts). 

3. Then a Text, a Hymn, and a Collect, all varying accord- 
ing to the day and season, there being always interposed 
between the Hymn and Collect the Magnificat, which is fre- 
quently followed by select sentences of Scripture. 

4. The service ends with numerous Collects and Invoca- 
tions of Saints, as was mentioned under the head of Lauds in 
the Matin service. 

VII. — Complixe, or Bedtime. 

1. This service is nearly invariable throughout the year, 
and begins with a Blessing for the ensuing night, a short 



520 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



Lesson, the Confession and Absolution as at Prime, the 
reading of select sentences and of four Psalms, viz. the 4th, 
31st, 91st, and 134th. 

2. Then a Hymn. 

3. A Text, Select sentences, Song of Simeon, sentences 
again, closing the reading of them with the Lord's Prayer 
and Creed, said privately ', and a Collect for the night. 

4. The service ends with an Antiphon, or responsive chant, 
in praise of the Virgin Mary, and a collection of Scriptures 
in relation to it ; and thus closes the complicated worship of 
the Roman daily ritual, giving to the faithful member of 
Christ's flock only a few hours of the night for rest, when he 
is again summoned to his devotions, long before the break 
of day, by the morning bell ! 

Such, reader, is a mere skeleton of the canonical daily wor- 
ship of a pious Romanist in a Roman country ; such it is in 
all. monasteries and cathedrals ; such it is, in theory, with all 
the faithful everywhere, except they neglect or shorten it as 
before related ; and yet, elaborate and lengthy as it is, I have 
not been able to introduce the numerous Antiphons and 
Benedictions occurring continually in this system, without 
risking the intelligibility of it with those who may peruse 
this volume. I have given a specimen of the Benedictions ; 
and I will add that the Antiphon is sometimes a sentence 
taken from the Psalm last read, in which the idea of the 
whole is supposed to be contained, and is chanted with great 
force by the choir both before and after each particular read- 
ing. It is more frequently, however, something composed 
expressly for the purpose, containing strong expressions of 
worship to the saints rather than to God. The following, for 
example, is the antiphon used in the Roman ceremonial from 
Advent to the Purification ; and I give the original Latin, with 
an accompanying translation into English, that the reader may 
have full proof of the absolute idolatry of the Roman system: 



OF RELI&IOCS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



521 



Alma Redemptoris Mater quae pervia 
cceli 

Porta manes, et Stella maris, suc- 

curre cadenti, 
Surgere qui curat, populo ; tu quae 

genuisti, 

Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Geni- 
torem, 

Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis 
ab ore 

Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum mise- 
rere ! 



Kindly Mother of the Redeemer, 

who art of heaven, 
The open gate, and star of the sea, 

aid a fallen people, 
Which is trying to rise again ; 

Thou who didst give birth, 
While nature marveled how, to 

Thy Holy Creator, 
Virgin both before and after, 

from Gabriel's mouth, 
Accepting the All-Hail, be merciful 

toward sinners ! 



From Purification to Good Friday, the following Antiphon 
is chanted : 



Ave, Regina coelorum ! 
Ave, Domina Angelorum ! 
Salve radix, salve porta ! 
Ex qua mundo lux est orsa. 
Gaude, Virgo gloriosa, 
Super omnes speciosa, 
Vale valde Decora, 
Et pro nobis Christum exora 



Hail, Queen of the heavens ! 
Hail, Governess of Angels ! 
Hail, the Root ! Hail the Gate ! 
Whence to the world Light is risen! 
Rejoice, glorious Virgin, 
Beautiful above all ! 
Farewell, thou most comely, 
And prevail on Christ for us.' 



A very spirited Antiphon is used from Easter to the first 
week complete after Pentecost : 



Regina coeli, ketare, 

Alleluia ! 
Quia quern meruisti portare, 

Alleluia ! 
Resurrexit, sicut dixit, 

Alleluia ! 
Ora pro nobis Deum, 15 

Alleluia ! 



Rejoice, Queen of heaven, 

Hallelujah ! [bear, 
For He whom Thou wert worthy to 

Hallelujah ! 
Has risen, as he said, 

Hallelujah ! 
Pray Thou God for us, 

Hallelujah ! 



15 Several Puritan writers affirm that this line stands in some places : 
Ora pro nobis, Dea — Pray for us, thou Goddess ! — but I have found no 
instance of the kind and do not credit the assertion. The idolatry of 
the Roman worship is bold enough without the risking of doubtful state- 
ments. 



522 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



The following is used between Trinity and Advent ; and 
with this I will close the citation of specimens, leaving the 
curious reader to look into the Breviary itself for numerous 
similar examples : 



Salve Regina, mater misericordiae, 
vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, 
salve ! 

Ad Te clamamus exules, filii Hevae ! 

Ad Te suspiraraus, gementes et 
flentes in hac lacrymarum valle ! 

Eja ergo advocata nostra, illos tuos 
raisericordes oculos ad nos con- 
vene ! 

Et Jesum benedictum fructum 
ventris Tui, nobis post hoc 
exilium ostende ! 

clemens, pia, dulcis Virgo, 
Maria ! 



Hail, Queen ! Mother of mercy ! 
our life, sweetness and hope, 
hail! 

To Thee we exiles cry out, the sons 
of Eve! 

To Thee we sigh, groaning and 
weeping in this tearful valley ! 

Come, then, our Patroness, thy 
merciful eyes turn thou on 
us ! 

And Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy 
womb, after this exile, show unto 
us ! 

gracious, pitiful, sweet Virgin, 
Mary ! 



There is no person among those likely to peruse these 
pages, who does not know, from his own observation, with 
what wonderful effect the chants of the Roman worship are 
thrown in at every period of the service ; but every one is 
not aware, perhaps, that the staple of those rapt strains con- 
sists of such stuff as I have here translated into English. The 
truth is, the entire ceremonial of the Breviary, and of those 
smaller compends of it used in the ordinary churches and 
chapels of Romanism, is read off in Latin, a language abso- 
lutely unintelligible to nearly every lay worshiper. The 
priests studiously conceal the real meaning of the words 
employed in their stately and impressive ritual, not only 
because they dare not risk their positive idolatry with a large 
portion of the people, but because, by this concealment, they 
also retain their office of representative, of mediator, of inter- 
preter of religion, between their congregations and the 
supreme Object of their worship. The Scripture lessons, the 



OF EELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



523 



prayers, the psalms and hymns, the antiphons and benedic- 
tions, indeed everything connected with their liturgy, on 
week days and Sundays, and at all of the numberless fasts 
and feasts, are doled out in medieval or modern Latin ; and 
the result is, that the priests, who are almost the only per- 
sons understanding it, have gradually usurped the reading 
of what properly belongs to the congregation, so that the 
most devout Romanist has nothing to do, in the daily or 
ferial worship of his Church, but to look on and observe the 
priesthood performing the service for him. Could he under- 
stand the language, it would do him no good to listen ; for 
everything is hummed over in such a monotonous undertone, 
as to defy all comprehension even to the scholar ; he gene- 
rally spends his time, therefore, either in looking around upon 
the people, or in crossing himself in private, or in repeating 
the prayers which he has hitherto neglected ; when the bell 
rings, however, which is the signal for special attention to 
what the officiating priest is saying, or rather doing, he inter- 
mits these particular devotions ; he makes no extemporary 
prayer, his petitions having been all written out and printed ; 
and he may attend upon this worship, and form a part of the 
body supposed to offer it, without ever hearing the name of 
God in the language he speaks and understands, and without 
a thought of his sins, or of the only means of his restoration 
to righteousness, or of that work of the heart which consti- 
tutes the ideal and essence of our religion, from his cradle to 
his grave ! 16 

16 It must be remembered that the above is nothing but a condensation 
of only a small portion of the Roman Breviary ; it is given as a specimen 
of the whole as contained in that four-volumed publication ; it is the 
regular daily service ; while the forms for the multitude of holy days, yet 
more pompous, perplexed and idolatrous, must be left to the imagination 
of such readers as have not witnessed, in Roman Catholic countries, the 
full-length ceremonial of Romanism. The service called Trentaine, for 
example, is marked by the repetition of the Lord's Prayer, amidst a mass 
of liturgical offices and the greatest display of hats, robes, books, and 



524: 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



II. The ritual of the Oriental or Greek division of the 
original universal Church, as a general thing, is but a repeti- 
tion of the Roman. The oriental mind, however, was always 
warmer than that of the western nations ; and the native 
glow of their common heart burns with a peculiar heat in 
their religious worship. The fancy of the Greeks, the lead- 
ing people of this eastern branch of the Christian Church, 
was always more fruitful than that of any other country ; 
their ancestral religion, as has been seen, was replete with 
the visions of a dreamy, speculative, and mercurial imagina- 
tion ; and, when converted to the doctrines of the Cross, 
they naturally desired to find in it a belief, a regimen, a 
ritual, as little as possible shorn of the splendor to which they 
had been accustomed. What they did not find, they added ; 

bells, for no less than thirty times at one genuflexion and in one monoto- 
nous hum of voices. But I must refer the curious reader to the Breviary 
itself. We have no thorough presentation of the Roman Catholic ritual in 
any of our English works on Popery. Dr. Elliott's "Delineation of Roman 
Catholicism" is decidedly the ablest extant statement of the doctrine and 
discipline of Romanism; and he is about adding to his two volumes a third 
on its political aspects ; but his work will then need, in order to its com- 
pletion, at least another volume on the Worship of the Romans. Such a 
volume would expose the absurdities and criminality of this great apostasy 
more perfectly than is possible to either of the other three departments of 
the subject ; and there is no living man, probably, so well prepared to 
furnish it as Dr. Elliott. Until such a production shall appear, the reader 
must go to the Breviary itself, and, at the same time, consult such works 
as Gravanti's Thesaurus Rituum cum notis Merari, Zaccaria's Bibliotheca 
Ritualis, Palmer's Origines Liturgicae, Brett's Collection of the Principal 
Liturgies with a Dissertation upon them, and, from these, he may go back 
to the great and standard productions of Amalarius, Walafridus, ilicro- 
logus, Alcuinus, and Menardus, as well as to the extant Liturgies of St. 
Chrysostom, St. Basil, and St. Cyril, all of which I have lying by me as I 
make this summary of the Roman daily worship. Bishop Hopkins 
promised in 1838 (The Primitive Church, p. 176) a general work on church 
worship, but I believe he has not yet favored the world with this pro- 
duction. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



525 



they were not satisfied with what the cooler Italian genius 
had in this line accomplished for them; they proceeded, 
from the moment of their separate existence as a church and 
people, to invent new forms, new acts, new scenes for their 
semi-theatrical exhibition of their faith; they could not bear 
a rival in the magnificence of their devotions ; and the end 
was, that, from the date of the division of the empire to the 
reign of Peter the Great of Russia, a cold and calculating 
northerner, who reformed the liturgy of the oriental Catho- 
licism, there was nothing to be seen on earth so gorgeous as 
the metropolitan worship of the Greeks. 

The Greek Church still retains the seven sacraments of the 
Roman ; and these differ from the Latin ritual only in the 
manner of their observance. Baptism, for instance, is admin- 
istered by a triune immersion. Children are baptized on the 
eighth day after birth ; and the sacrament of confirmation, 
by the holy Chrism or baptismal ointment, soon succeeds. 
The Eucharist, or Lord's Supper, is celebrated in the follow- 
ing manner : After the catechumens have been dismissed, 
the elements are carried round the church, on the head of 
the deacon, before consecration. Presently the priest prays 
God to make the bread and the wine the precious body and 
blood of Christ — first for each element separately, then for 
both united — making thus a three-fold supplication. Then, 
after some intervening prayers, he invokes the gift of the 
Holy Ghost; and lastly, after another similar interval, he 
addresses Jesus Christ our Lord, "who sittest," says the 
priest, " on the right hand of the Father, and yet art invisibly 
present with us here below : vouchsafe, by thy mighty hand, 
to impart to us thy most immaculate body, and thy most 
precious blood, and by our hands to all the people." The 
elements are then both administered to the deacon, and 
afterward to the congregation, the deacon repeating a 
prayer in which there is this confession : "I believe that this 



526 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



is thy most pure body indeed, and that this is thy holy blood 
indeed." !7 

The original sacerdotal order of the Orient were as careful 
as their Roman brethren to occupy every point of every 
man's approach to God ; and, therefore, the duty of peni- 
tence and the hope of pardon were by them converted into 
sacraments, which only an ordained clergyman can lawfully 
perform. Penitence prompts to confession of sin ; confession 
i of sin is followed by forgiveness ; and hence, that the priest- 

hood may stand directly in the path between the sinner and 
his God, and control the acts of both to its personal advan- 
tage, the repenting communicant is taught to make auricular 
confession to the priest, and to expect the absolution of 
Heaven at his hands. Thus, also, not only the connections 
between this world and the next, but the institutions of the 
existing social state, were taken into the possession of these 
ambitious and self-made representatives of God. As mar- 
riage is the foundation of the family, and as the family is the 
substance of the social organization, so no persons where 
the Greek Church has sway can enter into wedlock without 
receiving the permission and "sanction of the priest, who 
alone is qualified to perform the service of uniting two souls 
in one. Every period of human life, in fact, is presided over 

17 This is the form set forth in the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom, which is 
in general use among the Greeks ; and in the oath taken by every Russian 
bishop (Dr. King's Rites and Ceremonies of the Greek Church in Russia, 
p. 12) he declares that he "believes and understands that the transubstan- 
tiation of the body and blood of Christ in the holy Supper, as taught by 
the eastern and ancient Russian doctors, is effected by the influence and 
operation of the Holy Ghost, when the bishop or priest invokes God the 
Father in these words : ' And make this bread the precious body of thy 
Christ.' " The declaration of the Greeks themselves is still more em- 
phatic: "When the priest blesses the gifts, the being of the bread itself, 
and the being of the wine itself, is changed into the being of the true 
body and blood of Christ." — Waddingtori 's Greek Church, p. 44. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



527 



by the priesthood of Greece. Two persons wish to marry — ■ 
they are united by the priest ; children are born — they must 
be baptized and anointed by the priest ; the children enter 
into the fold of Christ — they are confirmed by the priest ; 
the parents and children are communicants of the Church — 
they take the elements and the virtue of them only from 
the priest; they commit their faults after baptism — they 
must offer their confession and be grateful for forgiveness 
only to the priest ; they are not only liable to ills, but to a 
final sickness — they receive extreme unction, the last anoint- 
ing, from the priest ; they die — and they will be turned from 
the gate of Paradise unless buried by a priest. So, from the 
beginning to the end of life, men can make no approaches to 
God, nor form any vital connections with one another, 
without the intervention, authority, and sanction of the 
priest ! 

The fasts and feasts of the Greeks are more numerous than 
the similar occasions of the Latin Church. "Besides the 
Catholic Lent," says Waddington, " there is a second lasting 
from Whitsuntide to St. Peter's day ; a third, from the 3d to 
the 15th of August, in honor of the Assumption ; and a 
fourth during the forty days preceding Christmas. In the 
monasteries, a fifth is added, to commemorate the exaltation 
of the Holy Cross, which occupies the first fourteen days of 
September. During all these fasts, excepting that before 
Christmas, the strictest abstinence, even to the exclusion of 
most sorts of fish, is enjoined and very generally practiced." 
But the fasts are more than balanced by the feasts : " As 
every day in the year," Waddington continues, " acknow- 
ledges the patronage of some saint, so those are very nume- 
rous which claim extraordinary celebration ; and on these 
occasions, the Greeks fail not to make compensation for 
extreme temperance by the opposite license. Thus their life 
is passed in an alternation of extravagances; and the priest 
who enforces the one does not much care to repress the 



528 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



other. Little removed from the condition of puerile subjec- 
tion, they break wildly forth when the festive season invites 
them, and return at its conclusion to their stated tasks of 
mortification and discipline. Their feasts partake, however, 
of a religious nature, and the saint of the day is particularly 
invoked to intercede with God for the forgiveness of his true 
worshipers, for such is the limit affixed to the adoration of 
saints by the Church. But the people, lively, ignorant, and 
superstitious, perceive not the ecclesiastical distinction ; and 
the beings whom they adore have power of themselves, as 
well to punish or pardon transgression, as to inflict or avert 
the earthquake or the tempest, to poison or purify the dews 
of evening, to nourish the olive-tree with fresh fountains and 
breezes, or to blast it with untimely sterility." 11 

It is easy to see that there can be no real worship of God, 
according to the Scriptures, among a people paying such 
homage to departed mortals. But they go still further. 
They give the same kind of adoration to the pictures of the 
saints with which they profusely adorn the interior of their 
churches. Statues, as religious objects, they entirely reject ; 
but pictures, tbey say, are only the histories of great events 
concentrated upon a small area and represented to the eye ; 
and these, therefore, are consecrated with incense and burn- 
ing tapers, with bowings and crossings, and with every act 
of a degrading superstition. It is a singular fact, however, 
that they will tolerate none but the rudest and most grace- 
less pictures — pictures in no degree rising above the flat sur- 
face of the canvas — since those which stand out in relief, and 
maintain due perspective, resemble too much the statue, 
which the Greeks so unanimously and heartily condemn. 
One of their ablest writers dwells with evident satisfaction 
and confidence upon this distinction : " There is a great dif- 
ference," says he, in his home-made Greek, which, to save 

18 Waddington's Present Condition of the Greek or Oriental Church, 
pp. 57, 58. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND "WORSHIP. 



529 



the time of the reader, I here translate, " between idols and 
pictures ; for the idols are the work of man's invention ; as 
the Apostle says — we know that an idol is nothing in the 
world ; while pictures are only the adumbration of some real 
transaction, which has its substance in the world, as the pic- 
tures of our Saviour, and of the saints." 19 Whatever may be 
the theory of the ecclesiastical writers, that these figures are 
not objects of devotion, but only images to aid the mind in 
its approach to God, the common man remembers no such 
metaphysical distinction : " We are told, of course," says 
Waddington, " that they are not objects of prayer, but only 
the means to awaken recollection or kindle devotion : and in 
proof of this it is asserted, that the Greek is much less fruit- 
ful than the Latin Church in records of miracles performed 
by them. But for my part, admitting the truth of this 
assertion, I must still confess that, when I have beheld the 
peasant or the shepherd from Parnes or Hymettus kneeling 
before the picture of the Holy Virgin; when I have observed 
the relaxation of his swarthy features, and the earnestness of 
his attitude and countenance ; I have found it hard to repress 
the belief, that he is in fact animated by the very same 
hopes and faith, in respect to the graceless figure toward 
which his eyes and prayers are directed, as were wont to 
inflame the piety of his pagan ancestor, when he worshiped 
before the statue of Minerva. 20 

Indeed, the Greek Catholics are as really pagans in their 
ritual as the loosest conception of the true ideal of Christ- 
ianity will permit them to be. They make the sign of 
the cross ; they worship the cross itself ; and it is by such 
outward rites that they are known as different from the 
ancient worshipers of the gods of the classic Pantheon. A 
part of their popular worship takes place in their churches ; 
a part is performed in the open air, in consecrated places ; 

19 Bicaut. cap. i. IT. 

30 Waddington's Present Condition of the Greek Church, p. 60. 

23 



530 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



and a part occurs at the graves and shrines of their unnum- 
bered saints. "The services of the Greek Church," says 
Waddington, " are exceedingly long and tedious. That most 
so, and also the most ancient, is that of St. Basil, which is be- 
lieved to have been composed about a.d. 370 ; but it is not now 
used except in the Sundays of Lent, and perhaps on one or two 
other occasions. It is superseded by that of St. Chrysostom, 
which has undergone, from time to time, a variety of altera- 
tions, as anything may have been altered, or innovated, or 
more distinctly defined, in the doctrines of the Church. But 
by the word liturgy the Greeks understand only the Com- 
munion Service ; and as to the rest, it varies every day in 
the year and every part of the day ; so the whole body of 
the services is sufficient to fill twenty folio volumes, beside 
one similar volume which is occupied by directions for the 
use of the rest. To the study of these books the learning 
and ability of the priest are usually confined — not with any 
view to comprehend the spiritual import of their contents — 
but simply to acquire some facility in the art of adjusting to 
each day its peculiar form of prayer ; and this is said to be a 
matter of so great difficulty, that few even succeed in per- 
fectly attaining it I 21 

It must be added, that in Russia, the services are all read 
in the nearly obsolete Sclavonian language, while in Asia 
Minor they are recited in the Hellenic Greek, which not one 
in five hundred of the native population can comprehend : 
" This last circumstance," says Waddington, " would be of 
more importance, if the greater portion of the ritual were not 
so executed as to be nearly, or entirely, inaudible to the con- 
gregation ; for it is read in a low, hurried, indistinct voice, 
and a great part of it directed to the east, in which it is not 
intended that the people should have any share. The origin 
of this practice, to us so offensive, is of course to be traced 



31 Waddington, pp. 63, 64. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



531 



to the establishment of the mediatory character of the priest- 
hood, as if their office were rather to pray for the people 
than with them. But beside the reproach of indistinctness 
and rapidity of utterance, made almost a necessity by the 
length of the services, the manner in which I have seen them 
performed is frequently indecent and impious. I have been 
present on occasions when the very semblance, not of devo- 
tion only, but even of dignity and gravity, has been thrown 
aside by the ministers ; and the wafer, which is ever received 
with the most profound piety, is sometimes administered 
with a smile !" 22 

The reader has not forgotten, however, the preacher of the 
golden mouth, St. Chrysostom, whose discourses were the 
glory of the ancient oriental church, and whose successors, it 
may be thought, yet atone for much of this absurdity, super- 
stition and idolatry by their addresses from the pulpit. But 
alas ! the degraded condition of Greek Catholicism has no 
such relief. Its priests have long since ceased to preach. In 
the place of sermons, they read from that twenty-volumed 
collection of ceremonies the most extravagant legends of the 
saints ; when this work supplies them with nothing suffi- 
ciently superstitious, they have an additional and ever-ready 
fund of miraculous stories in another distinct publication — 
the Tablet of the United Worthies — which contains three 
hundred and sixty-five of these lives of fabled purity and 
power ; and these, delivered with the most intense passion 
by an artful and sensuous elocution, and impressed upon the 
imagination of the multitude by violent appeals to the pic- 
tures with which the Avails of their temples are everywhere 
adorned, constitute the only instruction which the people are 
permitted to receive. Here again, it will be seen, there is no 
religion ; everything like personal piety, like a work of the 
heart, is lost ; and there is nothing in its place but the pomp 



Waddingtou, pp. 64, 65. 



532 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED • EDEAL 



of an outward worship, made up of superstitious ceremonies, 
which, muttered over in a language or two no longer sj)oken 
by any nation, and in tones too low and rapid to be under- 
stood, are as fruitless of -all religious life, or pious emotion, as 
would be, for the same length of time, the blowing of the 
wind! 23 

III. The ritual of ancient Gaul, commonly called the Gallic, 
had the same origin (in the general declension of vital piety 
after the conversion of Constantine) with that of Greece and 
Rome ; and it stands next to them in the order of time, as 
well as of historic interest, the Mozarabic or Spanish ritual 
being less ancient and not so important in its results. The 
Mozarabic liturgy, though originally independent of that of 
Rome, soon began to succumb to the growing influence of 
the Latin pontiff, and finally lost its comparative simplicity 
in the splendors imported from the Vatican. It shared the 
fate of the rituals of all the independent sees of the post- 
apostolic church, those of Alexandria and of Carthage not 
excepted, over which the Roman began to domineer in the 
infancy of the Christian cause. But the population of early 
Gaul, being mainly German, from the beginning possessed a 
peculiarly self-relying and independent spirit, which never 
permitted them to acknowledge the absolute supremacy of 
Rome. Though really converted to the Christian faith, and 

23 Dr. King, in the work heretofore referred to, has given a very good 
summary of the daily ritual of the Greek Catholics, as contained in their 
Breviary of one-and-twenty folios ; but it is, in all respects, so similar to 
what I have given of the Latin worship, that I preferred to present only a 
general idea of its observance, and that mainly in those parts which I had 
purposely omitted from the Roman. The reader may obtain additional 
intelligence respecting the history and present condition of the Greek 
Church in the works of all recent travellers in Greece, particularly from 
the production of Dr. Rufus Anderson, Observations upon the Peloponnesus 
and the G-reek Islands, to which I have been myself indebted. Dr. King, 
however, is the standard authority, next to the Greek Breviary itself, upon 
this interesting subject. 



OF EELIGIOTTS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



533 



living in a sort of religious harmony with the most obedient 
subjects of the papacy, they nevertheless always maintained 
a degree of ecclesiastical freedom preserved by no other 
dependency of the papal power. From the days of the 
Pragmatic Sanction, which, in 1438, asserted the liberties of 
the old Gallic Church, back to those of the first missionary 
saints by whom the barbarians of the Rhine and the Seine 
were originally converted, the church of what is now the 
empire of France never submitted to the dictation or direc- 
tion of the Roman worship. It is true that Pepin and Char- 
lemagne introduced the greater part of the Latin service into 
France ; but to this day there have been customs observed in 
the French congregations peculiar to themselves ; and the 
entire period between Charlemagne and St. Martin, the illus- 
trious apostle of southern Gaul, and even back to the open- 
ing of the second century, when the forests north of the Alps 
began to echo to the word of God — a period of not less than 
seven centuries — the Gallic Church had a ritual very much 
its own. 

While it is now, after the loss of the last copy of that ori- 
ginal liturgy of Gaul, absolutely impossible to restore all its 
elements, and still more impossible to reconstruct it as a 
whole, its general characteristics are very clearly understood ; 
and the first thing to be said about it is, that, compared with 
that of Greece and Rome, it was remarkable for its great 
simplicity. It divided the day into two portions, instead of 
seven, for which it furnished a morning and an evening 
service. The morning service consisted of the reading of 
lessons, not from a prayer-book, but directly from the Scrip- 
tures, of the delivery of a sermon from a platform or pulpit, 
of hymns and psalms sung by the whole congregation, of 
three kinds of prayer, silent, private, and social, and of the 
two sacraments of baptism and the supper. The Scripture 
lessons were brief; they were read from the old Italic or 
Latin translation, because the language of Rome was yet a 



531 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



living language over southern and central Europe ; and they 
were not in general fixed passages, always to be read accord- 
ing to the day, but were mostly selected at the moment in 
reference to the particular occasion. The sermon was gene- 
rally an exposition of parts, or of the whole, of the Scripture 
lessons. The psalms were those of David, but whether 
chanted as they stand in their prosaic form, or transposed 
into irregular rhythm after the fashion of some modern de- 
nominations, it is not now known. The hymns must have 
varied from one generation to another, as successive lyric- 
poets gained the ascendency among the early Christians, 
until the appearance of those celebrated collections bearing 
the names of St. Hillary and St. Ambrose, which gradually 
took the place, over the Latin world, of all former composi- 
tions. Before and in the midst of the music came those 
fixed lessons from Revelation known as collects in existing 
churches, and they were marked as consisting of such memo- 
rable passages, fit for all times and places, as could not be 
neglected by Christian people. As to prayer, each believing 
member of a congregation dropped upon his knees, on his com- 
ing into church, and made silent supplications to God for 
such blessings as he most desired upon himself and upon the 
people with whom he worshiped. Immediately after the 
reading or chanting of the psalms, there was set apart 
another portion of time for private prayer, introduced by the 
form of command called silentium indicere uttered by the 
deacon, somewhat resembling, if not borrowed from, the 
favete Unguis of the old Roman temples. These private 
devotions were entirely extemporaneous, and they were also 
audible, a thousand or more persons uttering their private 
petitions at the same moment, and without confusion, but 
causing such a beautiful murmur of voices as is now repeated 
in the Sunday school exercises of every Christian country.- 4 

24 This was doubtless a general custom in the early church, for we find 
Chrysostom (Horn, on Matt. six. 4, p. 290, Ox. Ed,) condemning loud 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



535 



Upon another silentium indicere from the officiating deacon, 
all voices were hushed at once, when the minister in the desk 
read a general supplication, or a series of supplications, called 
also collects, because the priest was supposed to collect the 
preceding prayers of the congregation — omnium preces 
colligere— -into one body, which, in their behalf, he offered to 
the God whom he was commissioned to serve and represent. 
The sacrament of baptism was generally performed in the 
open air, King Clovis himself submitting to this mode of con- 
fessing Christ ; the celebration of the Lord's Supper, adminis- 
tered in both its elements to the entire assembly, and with 
established but brief and simple forms of consecration, con- 
cluded, on all occasions, the morning services in the Gallic 
worship ; and its evening rites were almost entirely the same 
as those preceding, excepting that the sacraments were 
always omitted, and a greater portion of time was devoted to 
the cheerful exercises of the choir, in which the congregation 
never failed to unite with great skill and animation. 25 

IV. The ritual of the Church of England, from which the 
system established by John Wesley sprang, was compiled 
originally from the old Gallic service ; and this is the reason 
why I have taken so much time to give the reader an oppor- 
tunity of making some comparison of the Gallic with the 
Greek and Roman breviaries, and why I next proceed to 
make a summary account of the existing English worship ; 
for it is only by this thorough process that Methodism can 
arrive at a true self-consciousness, or prepare itself for a 
satisfactory justification of its rites and ceremonies before the 
higher intelligence of mankind. 

praying in the churches under his superintendence because it marred or 
broke up the general worship. 

25 Bishop Stillingfleet (Origines Britannicae, pp. 221-244) gives the 
substance of what is known of the liturgy of the old church of Gaul ; and I 
refer my reader to him, and to the learned authorities which he so numerously 
quotes, for further information upon this portion of my general subject. 



536 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



The Puritan argument against the Church of England 
was, and now is, that its ritual was altogether popish, it hav- 
ing come down to the times of Henry the Eighth of England 
from the hands of the Roman St. Augustin, with all the cor- 
ruptions and idolatries of Rome. Even Baxter, who, as a 
member of the commission appointed by Charles the Second 
to revise the English service, ought to have known better, 
joins in this unjust complaint. This is now the imputation 
against it from the current generation of Presbyteriaus and 
Independents. The simple truth is, however, that the Gallic 
service, which was carried into England by its earliest mis- 
sionaries, was noted over Europe for its obstinate resistance 
to that of Italy. As has been shown above, from the earliest 
introduction of Christianity into southern France to the 
reign of Pepin, the father of Charles the Great, the French 
worship was in almost every part of it different from that of 
other Roman nations ; and Charles himself declares the fact, 
that his father " brought the Roman way of singing into the 
Gallican churches, and their offices along with it." 26 

The Roman ritual, therefore, could not have been in vogue 
in France before that day ; and yet, it is proved by bishop 
Stillingfleet beyond the possibility of denial," that the old 
English service had reached its maturity prior to that period. 

The Church of Englaud, indeed, can offer no little claim 
to an apostolic origin ; St. Paul himself may have preached 
the Gospel in Great Britain ; for it seems to be very clear 
that Claudia Ruffina, the wife of Pudens and daughter of the 
celebrated Caractacus, was one of those of " Caesar's house- 
hold," mentioned by St. Paul as having embraced the new 
religion. This Claudia, therefore, it is likely, was at the 
same time a Briton by birth and a convert of the Apostle ; 
and she could scarcely fail to encourage her benefactor to 

26 De Imag. lib. i. and Stilling. Or. Brit. p. 243, where the reader will 
find this fact established beyond contradiction. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



537 



visit her native land and propagate the Christian faith 
among her countrymen. 27 Roman Catholic historians, I 
know, such as Alford and the author of the Antiquitates 
Britannicse, would naturally struggle to make St. Peter an 
earlier missionary to Britain ; but the balance of opinion 
among English antiquarians is, as is shown by Stillingfleet, 
that the first British convert to Christianity was this female 
heroine of Martial's genius, and that St. Paul, at her sugges- 
tion, was the first preacher of the Gospel in that illustrious 
island now governed by another Christian woman. 

Whatever may be thought of this supposition, however, 
there is nothing more certain than that Christianity was 
communicated to the Britons in the times of the apostles. 
Eusebius, Theodoret, and Clement of Rome are confidently 
cited by the English antiquarians in proof of this assertion. 
Eusebius says distinctly, that the apostles, after having 
visited the Persians, Armenians, Parthians, Indians, and 
Scythians, passed over the ocean to the British islands — 
em rag naXovfievag Bperravtuag vf]oovg 2S — preaching the Gos- 
pel to the people ; and from that day there was in existence 
such an institution as the Church of England. The country 
being an island, or a group of islands, lying far away from 
the reach of the papal arm, and having independence and 
power enough more than once to resist and repel the legions 
of imperial Rome, its ecclesiastical establishments were left 
to grow up and develop as best they could ; and nothing was 
more natural, therefore, than for the congregations of Great 
Britain^ under these circumstances, to borrow the tendencies 
and habits of their nearest and more enlightened neighbors 
of the continent. The Churches of Gaul and of Britain, in- 

27 It is possible that Martial (Lib. iv. ep. 13, and lib. xi. ep. 53) may have 
celebrated the wit and beauty of this first of the British Christians in his 
noted epigrams. Stillingfleet (Or. Brit. p. 45) speaks with a good deal of 
assurance to this effect. 

28 Euseb. Demonst. Evang. Lib. iii. c. 7, p. 113. 

23* 



538 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



deed, professing the same doctrines, and having to defend 
themselves against a common paganism, could not do other- 
wise than live and labor together on the most familiar terms. 
As the two people had more intercourse with one another 
than with all other nations in the world, so their churches 
must have maintained the most intimate relations ; and as 
France had for centuries preserved her independence of the 
domineering power of Rome, Britain, being still further 
removed from the seat of the j^apacy, found even less diffi- 
culty in the assertion of her self-control. Thus the two went 
along together ; and it is known that the Gallic Church had 
become of such consequence, at the opening of the fourth 
century, that, in the year 314, a great council was sum- 
moned to meet at Aries, where at least three British bishops, 
it may be added, were in attendance. 29 The Christians of 
France and England had attained to such a measure of im- 
portance at this time, that the edicts of this first of the west- 
ern councils were sent to the Roman bishop, not for his con- 
firmation, but that he might publish them to his diocese : 
" What we have decreed in common council," says the epis- 
tle they addressed him, " we have signified to your Grace, 
that all may know what in future ought to be observed." 80 
Nothing is clearer, in fact, than the original independence of 
the churches of England and of France. They lived in great 
harmony with each other ; they had a common religion and a 
common ritual ; but neither of them admitted the supremacy 
or received the liturgy of Rome. If England looked abroad 
at all for an example to emulate, it was only to her neighbors 
and friends across the Channel ; and the Gallic Church felt a 
corresponding care over the success of Christianity in 

29 Orig. Brit. pp. 16-19. 

30 Orig. Brit. p. 85. Petrus de Marca (De Concord. Lib. vii. c. 14, p. 2) 
quoted by Stillingfleet, says that these decisions of the council were sent 
to the Roman bishop, " as the emperors sent their edicts to their pretorian 
prefects." 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



539 



Britain ; for when, at a subsequent period, certain false doc- 
trines had arisen in England, the Gauls sent over Germanus 
and Lupus, who had been the means of much good among 
the barbarians of the Seine, to restore their brethren to the 
common faith. Germanus was at that time bishop of Paris, 
where there is still a street that commemorates his name ; 
and his success was so great among the Britons, that he not 
only removed for the time all false theology, but established 
in England the ritual of his country on a more permanent 
basis than it had ever known before. 31 

After no little examination of this interesting subject, I 
find, indeed, that the learned world is almost unanimous in 
asserting the fact of there having been but four original and 
independent liturgies — the Roman, the Greek, the African, 
and the Gallic — each of which can be traced backward, as to 
some of its contents, to a period not very distant from the 
days of the apostles. The African I have not represented in 
these pages, because it so soon gave place to the liturgy of 
Rome, though the ancient service is said to be yet occasion- 
ally performed by the Copts of the Upper Xile. The Roman 
and Greek have been shown to have differed very materially 
from one another ; and it is just as certain that the Gallic, 
from which the English ritual was derived, retained much 
of the primitive simplicity of religious worship, when the 
others had fallen into most of the old pagan customs of the 
Greek and Roman divisions of the world. One thing, at all 
events, is now settled beyond the chance of further contro- 
versy, that the original service of the English Church was 
almost entirely a repetition of the Gallic, and that it was 
never regarded as the product of the ritual of Rome. 32 

31 Orig. Brit. p. 221. Archbishop Usher (De Primord. p. 3-43) confirms 
this statement of Stillingfieet. 

32 Even the Oxford Tractarians (vol. L, pp. 436-447) admit that the 
Gallic ritual was very unlike that of Rome, and that the English was taken 
from it. 



540 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



It cannot be denied, however, that Roman customs, rites, 
and ideas gradually found an entrance into the English 
liturgy", after France and the whole of Western Europe had 
fallen before the growing influence and power of the Roman 
see. Bishop Stillingfleet, it is true, closes up his learned 
discussion of the origin of the British Church in a style of 
triumphal exultation: "From which discourse it will appear," 
he says, "that our Church of England hath omitted none of 
those offices wherein all the ancient churches agreed ; and 
that, where the British or Gallican and Roman differed, our 
church hath not followed the Roman, but the other; and, 
therefore, our dissenters do unreasonably charge us with 
taking our offices from the Church of Rome." 33 So far as 
the general structure of the English liturgy is concerned, 
this self-gratulation is founded in historic truth, but to make 
the boast of any considerable value, the able prelate should 
have shown, that the papal ceremonies admitted into the old 
British service in the middle ages had been entirely excluded 
by the Reformation. This, however, was a task which he 
might well decline to undertake. He very well knew, 
indeed, that the ablest writers of his church confess the 
existence of a great deal of papal corruption in the English 
ritual before the reign of Henry the Eighth of England : 
" Before the Reformation," says Wheatly, in his standard 
work on the Common Prayer, "the liturgy was only in 
Latin, being a collection of prayers made up partly of some 
ancient forms used in the primitive Church, and partly of 
some others of later original, accommodated to the supersti- 
tions which had by various means crept by degrees into the 
Church of Rome, and from thence derived to other churches 
in communion with it, like what we may see in the present 
Roman Breviary and Missal." 34 Should not the exulting 

33 Or. Brit., p. 244. 

34 A Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church 
of England, p. 22. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



541 



bishop have informed us, what became of these popish elements 
after the Reformation ? But the facts of the case are open 
to all interested in the question. In the year 1537, as the 
world knows, a committee of the Convocation published 
the first attempt at a reformed ritual of the Church of 
England under the title of " The Godly and Pious Institution 
of a Christian Man," which, with all its improvements upon 
the older service, still retained the Ave Maria, the Seven 
Sacraments, and many similar relics of the Roman worship. 35 
The committee nominated, in 1540, by Henry the Eighth 
himself, after laboring together till the February of 1543, 
accomplished but little more than to republish the above 
work in the language of the country, the first edition having 
been in Latin. 36 King Edward the Sixth, not being satisfied 
with the works of his predecessor, in 1547, appointed a new 
committee, who first compiled a communion service, and 
then proceeded to the greater task of revising the entire 
English liturgy, which, in its new form, was ratified by an 
act of parliament as a work brought to perfection " by the 
aid of the Holy Ghost." 37 In less than three years, how- 
ever, the exceptions at once taken to the retained extrava- 
gances and idolatries of Rome, prevailed on the king to 
make another revision ; and this time the learned Bucer and 
Peter Martyr were called in from Germany to aid in the 
reconstruction of the English ritual. It is acknowledged 
now by the more candid of the English ritualists, that this 
revision was a revolution backward, and the work was 
rejected, in 1551, by the British parliament. 38 Queen Mary 
followed Edward, and restored the old forms of worship. 
Elizabeth, not venturing to risk too much with a yet semi- 

26 Bishop Atterbury's Rights of an English Convocation, pp. 184-205, 
and Wheatly's Common Prayer, p. 23. 

38 Wheatly, p. 23. 37 Wheatly, p. 25. 

sa Wheatly, pp. 25-26 and Strype's Memorials of Archbishop Craumer, 
pp. 52-210. 



54:2 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



popish people, instead of restoring the first and more primi- 
tive of King Edward's publications, republished and sanc- 
tioned a slightly revised edition of the second, which con- 
tained the offices of the seven sacraments, of confession and 
absolution by the priest, and an ambiguous declaration of the 
real and essential presence of the body and blood of Christ 
in the consecrated elements. 59 The Elizabethan liturgy, 
with only small alterations and additions, continued through 
the reigns of James and Charles the First ; but Charles the 
Second, to please the Puritans, appointed a new committee, 
who were authorized to revise the book then in use, but " to 
avoid, as much as possible, all unnecessary alterations of the 
forms and liturgy wherewith the people were altogether 
acquainted, and had so long received in the Church of Eng- 
land ;" but this commission, composed about equally of 
Episcopal and Puritan divines, could not agree upon any 
revision whatsoever; and so, the bishops having recom- 
mended a few verbal alterations, which were at once adopted 
by both the parliament and the convocation, the second 
Prayer-Book of Edward the Sixth, from which many of the 
old Gallic forms were excluded, and into which many cere- 
monies, rites, and prayers of papal origin were introduced, 
was acknowledged bylaw, in 1661, as the established liturgy 
of the Church of England, from which there has since been 
no departure. 40 

It would be a useless labor to portray the daily services 
of the Church of England. It is read in the English language 
and is therefore known to every one likely to be a reader of 
this volume. Close observers, even when not possessed of 
the means of a critical comparison of it with its predecessors, 
have not failed to witness in it a general resemblance to the 
Roman. In the first place, it is all read from printed forms, 
there being no place in it for extemporaneous prayer. It is 



89 Wheatly, pp. 26-28. 



Wheatly, 28-30. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



543 



also exceedingly lengthy, and, to most persons, tedious. It 
is repetitious, the daily service being nearly uniform for 
every day of the year. It is exclusive, and tends to the pro- 
duction of an exclusive and narrow spirit, one of its creeds, 
known as the Athanasian, making the reception of its own 
form of devotion essential to salvation : " Whosoever will be 
saved," says that instrument, " before all things it is neces- 
sary that he hold the Catholic faith, which faith, except 
every one so keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he 
shall perish everlastingly ; and the Catholic faith is this :" 
then comes the body of the creed, nine-tenths of which con- 
sists of an explanation of the unfathomable mystery of the 
trinity ! In the doctrine of absolution it sets forth and main- 
tains the central idea of popery, the germ of the whole papal 
system, claiming for the priesthood the power to forgive sins : 
" Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he turn 
from his wickedness and live, and hath given power and com- 
mandment to his ministers to declare and pronounce to his 
people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of 
their sins." It has professedly excluded the worship of the 
saints, but it continues the nearly equal custom of paying special 
adoration to God on their days ; for the philosophical 
Romanist claims to worship God in their name / the English 
churchman does it in their honor ; and if there is any the- 
oretical difference between the two acts, it must certainly be 
rather small. This recognition of the saints in the English 
ritual is very marked, it containing the names of sixty-eight 
of them, and there being no less than one hundred and forty- 
seven days of every year set apart for particular services con- 
nected with their lives. The English ritual enjoins, also, 
eighty-one days for feasting, and one hundred and seven 
fasts, being six more than one for every alternate day of 
every year. It reduces the number of the sacraments to two, 
but at the same time appoints prayers and other ceremonies for 



544 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



the five others acknowledged by Romanism, calling them 
offices instead of sacraments, and yet making them too much 
the memorials of what they were intended to replace. The 
full liturgic service of the Church of England, in fact, as wit- 
nessed in its real dimensions in the Episcopal congregations 
of Great Britain, excepting only that it is read in English, is 
scarcely distinguishable from that of the neighboring Roman 
chaj)els, there being in both the same attention to priestly 
habits, the same reading of everything connected with it, the 
same pomp and ceremony in every part, the same address to 
the imagination through the senses, and the same want of 
that real devotion of the soul witnessed in every truly pious 
congregation, which, according to the animus of vital Christ- 
ianity, and from the impulse of a heartfelt experience, wor- 
ships the Father in spirit and in truth. 41 

V. The Wesleyan movement, it will be remembered, began 
within the bosom of the Church of England ; its founder, and 
its first adherents, were members of that religious body ; 
they were all of them accustomed to its appointed service ; 
and the consequence was, that, while connected with that 
organization, they religiously observed its forms, and pre- 
pared a ritual for themselves after their separation. The 
Wesleyans of Great Britain are somewhat more liturgic in 
their daily worship than their brethren of this country ; but 
in both, as well as among all Wesleyan Methodists the world 
over, the general principles and characteristics of devotion, 
public, social, and private, are almost identical : 

1. It has been seen that Methodism was a movement, and 
is now an organization, based upon the personal experience 
of religion in the heart of all its members ; and the theory 

41 Wheatly (pp. 52-78), confesses that the Romish saint-days are still 
retained in the English liturgy, though they are not celebrated with any 
special services ; but the Oxford Tractarians see no reason for this dis- 
tinction between the two lists of saints. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



545 



is, therefore, that every one of these members, male and 
female, renders thanks to God continually, and in all places, 
either silently or audibly, for the work he has wrought 
within them. They are supposed, indeed, to live a life of 
prayer and supplication, that this power of God may be kept 
alive within their hearts, and that it may be imparted to 
every other member of the human family. They are not 
only to be in this frame of mind generally, but are to have 
particular times and seasons for special outpourings of the 
soul. As every one of them professes to have been made the 
temple of God, dedicated to the perpetual adoration of his 
Maker and Redeemer, so in the heart of every one, which is 
his inner temple, his holy of holies, there is always to be kept 
up a sensible indwelling of the glorious Shekinah, whose ring 
of light between the two cherubim of Faith and Reason is 
ever to be preserved burning and responsive to every act of 
heartfelt worship. Mental prayer, therefore, is to be inces- 
sant, the individual being supposed to be always in a frame 
of mind prompting to actual supplication. This condition of 
the soul will also seek opportunities of particular devotion ; 
and, therefore, there will be (with the living Christian) 
places and times of secret intercession. As every person is 
in some way connected with a family, and as there are in the 
family certain seasons more than commonly suggestive of our 
indebtedness to the goodness and long suffering of God, in the 
gift of this inward life, and in the preservation of it against 
the natural results of our misconduct, so every one who feels 
the stirrings of this interior impulse will consecrate those 
special seasons, such as the hours of rising and going to rest, 
and when the daily bread asked of God is received and eaten, 
to such services as are best adapted to the household altar. 
In the smaller circles of society, also, as well as in the public 
congregation, every person of this vitalizing spirit of religion 
will see numerous occasions for that sort of prayer that 
springs up spontaneously from this internal fountain of devo- 



546 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



tion. The greater part of all the worship, which an experi- 
mental Christian feels prompted from within to pay to God, 
is of the same spontaneous character. Such is the variety of 
circumstance, situation, and condition, and such are the 
incessant changes in all these respects going on at all times 
about and within us, that no book of prayer, were it as volu- 
minous as the Greek and Roman Breviaries united, or even 
as a public library, would be ample enough to meet the 
multitudinous and fluctuating demands of this part of reli- 
gious worship. Nor could any precomposed form of prayer, 
written without the possibility of knowing the precise 
character of events, in individual or social life, which had not 
been actually developed, fail many times to fall upon the 
worshiper as irrelevant, insignificant, without any pertinence 
whatever to the events as they would seem while actually trans- 
piring. This is as true of public as it is of private worship. 
No clergyman can tell beforehand the precise condition of his 
future congregation. His people are always in the act of 
some transition, either going forward in religious experience, 
or going backward, or in a state of doubtful fluctuation. The 
time of the year, the changes of the weather, the health and 
sickness of his flock, and a thousand changeable particulars 
of their daily course, have to be taken into consideration, 
and deserve to be brought into the body of his public and 
social supplications. He never can tell precisely what they 
will want, ,or what he will need, till he and they meet face to 
face in the actual performance of their common work of 
worship. Much less can one clergyman, or any number of 
clergymen, whatever may be their piety or experience, fore- 
see what another clergyman will want in his particular and 
therefore peculiar field of labor. No man, consequently, and 
no company of men, have the prescience to write out forms 
of prayer suitable for all possible occasions, whether for 
themselves, or for other persons. It is still more impossible 
for one generation of men to precompose the entire worship 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



547 



of a coining generation. Every man, with all his connec- 
tions to the social state, is mostly an individual ; every par- 
ticular society of 'men is mainly an individual society ; every 
generation of mankind is almost wholly an individual genera- 
tion ; the individual man, the individual society, the indi- 
vidual generation of mankind are all the while in a condition 
of change, of transition, it may be of progress. This indi- 
viduality must pray; it must have its own peculiarity of 
prayer, or pine for the want of needed sustenance ; it must 
have a worship springing chiefly from its own conscious state, 
growing with its growth, and changing with its varying for- 
tunes, or the form of devotion will soon be but the shell in 
which the animating life . has perished and become extinct. 
This individual worship cannot be precomposed, because the 
occasions of it cannot be foreseen. The fathers might as well 
have undertaken to write our sermons for us, as to compose 
for us a body of devotion, incapable of the slightest variation. 
The student of patristic literature falls in with frequent dis- 
courses against the theology, the morals, and the habits of 
the old Greek and Roman pagans, at this day as forgotten a 
set of topics as any that can be mentioned. Our ministers 
might now as well reproduce these homilies of Ambrose, of 
Cyril, of Chrysostom, before their several congregations, as 
to spend all their breath in reading the liturgies prepared by 
these ancient doctors. They themselves, indeed, were not so 
particular to follow such prescriptions. There is a great 
difference of character and of contents among the most 
ancient of these liturgies. Each grand division of the Roman 
empire, each capital of a province, each important city, in 
the olden time, had a ritual peculiar to itself. Scarcely did 
any two leading congregations entirely agree in their forms 
of worship ; and yet, until the introduction and establishment 
of the Roman Breviary, and in some parts of the world, as 
in Gaul and Britain, for several ages afterward, there ex- 
isted this general custom of devoting the larger portion of 



548 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



the time of public worship to that individual, spontaneous, 
extemporary prayer, which springs so naturally from a genuine 
experience of a heartfelt religion. 42 It is a well-known historic 
fact, indeed, that there was no written liturgy in the Christian 
world until the time of St. Basil, nearly three hundred years 
after the death of the latest of the apostles. Up to that 
period, therefore, nearly all the prayers of public worship 
must have been extemporaneous, the only exceptions being the 
Lord's Prayer, and such few simple forms as each congrega- 
tion would naturally fall into in the celebration of those rites, 
which, in their nature, admit of no variation. The same 
was true of the original Hebrew worship ; for Buxtorf tells 
us that the greater part of it was extemporaneous until the 
founding of the Great Synagogue, a few centuries before the 
advent of Christ : M Be it known to you," says the Rabbi 
Bechai, quoted by Buxtorf, " that, from the time of Moses 
to the men of the Great Synagogue, there was no certain and 
equal order and form of prayer among the Israelites, but 
every one arranged his own prayer, and delivered it accord- 
ing to his individual knowledge, wisdom and eloquence, until 
the men of the Great Synagogue came, and prepared this 
prayer called Schemoneh Esre, in order that the Israelites 
might have an equal and common form of prayer." 43 It is 
equally well known, too, that, it was at this time that the 
Jewish nation began to settle down into the backslidden con- 
dition, which continued till the coming of the Saviour, and 
winch necessarily followed this reduction of all free worship 
into the bondage of written forms. In the same way. the 
Church of Christ could say, in the words of old Tertulliam 
from the day of its establishment to its general decline after 
the conversion of Constantine the Great : " We pray without 

42 Bishop Stiilingfleet (Orig. Brit., p. 230) admits this statement in that 
very work which he wrote for the purpose of establishing the antiquity of 
the English forms of worship. 

43 Synag. Jud. Tert., ed. a.d. 1712, cap. 10., p. 207. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AKD WORSHIP. 



549 



a monitor, because we pray from the heart." 44 It is not my 
design to infer from these historic facts, however, that it was 
the settling of the original religious worship of the Church 
into liturgic forms that caused the decline from which it did 
not recover till a very recent period. The liturgies were 
not the cause, but the consequence, of that general decline 
of the apostolic spirit. They are the monuments that mark 
its beginning and its consummation. So long as the original 
fervor of religion remains unabated, forms for individual 
worship will not be needed, as the thought and feeling of the 
worshiper will be sure to flow forth in the most natural and 
spontaneous expression. ETor will any forms in such case be 
sufficient to hold the exulting, daring, venturous spirit of 
devotion. It will overleap all bounds, and fly to its mark 
with the speed and momentum of an instinct. When cooled, 
however, and bereft of its native force, the soul submits to a 
liturgy as a lame or impotent man leans upon his crutch ; 
and by use the crutch becomes at length so necessary, that 
the sufferer could scarcely limp along without it. The natu- 
ral language of devotion, however, is that which comes freely 
from the heart when drawn to God by that attraction, which 
always exists between weakness and strength, between 
penitence and pardon, between want and plenty. Prayer, in 
other words, is naturally extemporaneous ; it thus utters 
most correctly the genuine emotions of the soul; it thus 
adapts its utterances the most perfectly to the varying condi- 
tion and circumstances of the worshiper ; it thus comes forth 
with a truer reality and a greater warmth and energy of pur- 
pose ; it thus commends itself, and the objects for which it 
seeks, the most universally to the general taste of mankind, 
making the religion with which it is instinct to be more 
popular and impressive. This, at all events, seems to have 
been the judgment and the experience of the apostolic Church ; 



44 Tert. Apol, c. 30. 



550 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



it was the judgment and experience of the universal Church 
till it began to be overshadowed by the dark clouds of' 
popery ; it was the judgment and experience of the Gallic 
and British Churches for centuries after the rest of the world 
had fallen before the influence of Roman superstition ; and it 
was the judgment of John Wesley, confirmed by the expe- 
rience of universal Methodism, which, to this cause, owes a 
large part of that wonderful popularity and success, which 
have attended it from its first inauspicious beginning to its 
present position of power, if not of triumph. 45 

2. Methodism, however, being an attempt to restore the 
ideal of primitive Christianity, and not a reformation based 
on logical demonstrations, while it admitted the naturalness 
and superior value of extemporaneous prayer, as the general 
custom of individual and of social worship, at the same time 
adopted forms of devotion for all those fixed occasions in 
which the personality of individuals is lost in the common 
sentiment of a congregation, and where, the very object of 
the ceremony is to enshrine and preserve an idea beyond the 
possibility of change ; and if my reader will here take the 
pains to consult the ritual of Methodism, as contained in the 
Book of Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the 
United States, and the similar publications of the denomina- 
tion in other countries, he will see how carefully the fathers 
of the system discriminated between what is individual and 
what is common, between what must always be variable and 
what in its very nature was intended to be fixed, in religious 

45 Bishop Stillingfleet (Orig. Brit. pp. 221-244) settles the extempora- 
neousness of the original worship of the Church, not only in Gaul and 
Britain, but over Europe, beyond a question ; and with him agree nearly 
every ecclesiastical historian and critic of the first eminence ; but I will 
particularly refer to Bp. Hopkins of the Protestant Ep. Church of the 
United States (Prim. Church, pp. 164-185) who seems to think that both 
modes of prayer, the extemporaneous and the formal, were practiced from 
the days of the apostles. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



551 



worship. The individual and therefore variable part of wor- 
ship, whether performed in private or in public, by one per- 
son or by a numerous congregation, is that which expresses 
the daily life of those who offer it. The common and fixed 
portion, on the other hand, is that which embodies, perhaps 
I may say incarnates, the two sacramental acts enjoined upon 
every professing Christian, and which were intended to be 
perpetual and unchangeable to the latest generation of the 
world. The one has this peculiarity, that it can be performed 
by any person, under any circumstances, at any time, and in 
any place where Providence may cast his lot. The other as 
positively requires the cooperation of the Church, it being 
impossible for an individual to baptize himself, or to admi- 
nister to himself, unless he happens to be a clergyman, the 
sacrament of the Supper. Nor do I think it would be scrip- 
tural for a single clergyman thus to receive this latter sacra- 
ment ; for the Lord himself partook not of it alone ; and in 
every part of the ceremony, where he administered it to his 
disciples, and which was doubtless a pattern for all ages of 
the Church, he constantly employs the plural pronouns, as if 
he set apart this rite for the common use of his followers in 
all coming time. Baptism and the Supper, therefore, are 
settled and determined institutions ; they have no such thing 
as development ; they have no variation in their purpose or 
significance ; they are plainly adapted to no private per- 
formance, but to a public and common use ; and it therefore 
results that fixed forms are not only permissible but almost 
essential to the integrity, perpetuity and uniformity of their 
observance. Indeed, I see not how an entire congregation, 
varying from a few persons to a multitude, could adequately 
unite in ceremonies intended for the simultaneous cooperation 
of every believer in it, without their first agreeing upon some 
particular way, and upon some set of words, for their com- 
mon guidance ; and if some way must be agreed upon, and 
certain words must be chosen and received, they may as well 



552 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



be written out and read, as kept in the mind and recited by 
a common recollection. A precomposed prayer is nothing 
but a petition once in the mind only, then remembered, and 
finally written down and printed ; the printing of it works 
no alteration of its character, but only prepares it for the use 
of many individuals at once, and fixes it as it is for as long a 
time as it may thus remain ; and nothing, therefore, could be 
more germane to the intention, the meaning, and the proper 
observance of the two established sacraments of the Church 
of Christ, than some forms of devotion, such as have been 
connected with them from the beginning to the present 
day. 

Whatever may be our reasonings upon this subject, how- 
ever, it is historically clear, that the two Christian sacraments 
have had their set forms of observance from the earliest 
period in the history of our common faith. It is well known 
that Jesus and his apostles performed these sacraments ; 
Jesus was himself baptized, thus setting an example which 
his disciples followed ; he instituted and ate of the Supper 
with his disciples ; these two acts must have been performed 
according to some particular manner ; and this manner, in 
each case, though not written out in scripture, must have 
been handed down by common custom from one generation 
to another. Precisely the same words would not be remem- 
bered in every case ; the people of different and distant places 
and of mutually unintelligible languages, would suffer some 
variations to arise from the original pattern ; and these Agna- 
tions, trivial but numerous, would afterward fall into a certain 
small number of distinct rituals, as the great sees began to 
extend their controlling influence and power over their subur- 
ban churches. This is the actual course taken by the rites 
connected with these sacraments, according to the revelations 
of undoubted history ; and the learned, therefore, have been 
able to classify the unnumbered liturgies of the primitive age 
under the four generic forms, which, however, have so many 



OF EELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



558 



resemblances as to show them to have been derived from one 
older and common source. 

The proof of their great antiquity is remarkable and in- 
teresting. 

The oldest of the four is that known as Basil's, a manu- 
script of which was discovered by Montfaucon, in the Bar- 
barini library at Rome, and which was found to be identical 
with the one quoted and subscribed to by two hundred and 
twenty-seven oriental bishops at the Council of Trullo, which 
is known to have been held in a.d. 691. The liturgy there 
quoted and consented to was called, by the decrees of the 
Council, St. Basil's liturgy ; it is certain that St. Basil 
wrote a liturgy three hundred and ten years prior to this 
Council ; it is certain that that liturgy was generally used in 
the Greek churches from the time it was composed till the 
sitting of the Council ; and thus the chain is complete be- 
tween the Barbarini manuscript, which still exists, and the 
old Greek ritual of St. Basil, whose works were published 
but a little more than three hundred years after the probable 
decease of the apostle, John. Such is the antiquity of St. 
Basil's liturgy, in which the two sacraments are celebrated 
by fixed and acknowledged forms. 

The reader of ecclesiastical history will remember that, at 
the Council of Chalcedon, which sat in a.d. 451, the sect 
known as Monophysites was condemned, since which time 
they have maintained in Judea, Mesopotamia, Syria, and the 
southern parts of Asia Minor, a separate existence from the 
orthodox Christians of those countries, following the ritual 
which they say they had always before that used. This 
ritual they still read in the Syriac language ; it has also been 
recently discovered, that in the communion service, it agrees 
exactly, expression for expression, with the service yet pre- 
served and read by the orthodox church now existing at 
Jerusalem ; and it is a curious fact, that these orthodox 
Christians of Jerusalem claim that their liturgy has con- 

24 



554 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



tinued with them from the days of the apostles, their tradi- 
tion ascribing it to St. James. In this, too, the two sacra- 
ments are adnrinistered according to fixed and preestablished 
forms. 

In the ancient patriarchate of Alexandria, which embraced 
the whole of northern Africa, the Monophysites now use a 
ritual printed in the Coptic language, which calls itself " the 
liturgy of St. Mark which Cyril perfected ;" while it is cer- 
tain that, as late as the twelfth century, the orthodox Chris- 
tians of the same region employed a liturgy which they 
ascribed with equal assurance to St. Mark ; and it is a yet 
more striking fact, that, in a remote convent of Calabria, 
inhabited by oriental monks of the order of St. Basil, the set- 
tled enemies of the Monophysites, a Greek manuscript has 
been found of the tenth or eleventh century, entitled the 
Liturgy of St. Mark, which, from the nature of some of its 
prayers in relation to the falling and rising of the Xile, was 
evidently prepared for the use of the old church of Africa. 
And here again the two sacraments are observed in accord- 
ance with a settled form. 

The Roman missal, on the other hand, which contains the 
papal service of the Supper, is known to have existed, in its 
present shape, not more than eight hundred and sixty years ; 
but earlier forms of it can be traced with great clearness to 
the reign of Pope Gregory the Great : and the communion 
service of this pontiff, dating before the year a.d. 596, pro- 
fesses to have been only a revision of an older form author- 
ized by Pope Gelasius, a.d. 497. A manuscript copy of this 
Gelasian communion service was found by Thomasius, in the 
seventeenth century, in the library of the queen of Sweden. 
Another manuscript communion service exists, which the 
ablest antiquarians have decided to have been the Roman 
Sacramentary of the times of pope Leo the Great, who was 
a member of the Council of Chalcedon in a.d. 451. It was 
found in the library of the Chapter of Verona ; and, after 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE A2$T> WOEoHir, 



555 



severe and frequent examinations, its claim to this great 
antiquity has been generally acknowledged by the learned. 
This ritual is ascribed, of course, to the authority of St. 
Peter ; and it contains the offices connected with the princi- 
pal sacrament in a written and settled form. 46 

The simple truth is, without touching at all the traditions 
by which these several forms of the sacramental services are 
ascribed to the apostles, that they can all be fairly traced to 
the fifth century, and one of them to the fourth ; and then, it 
may be added, no earlier date can be pointed out when it 
can be positively or even probably declared, that similar or 
at least some sacramental forms were not employed in the 
celebration of these fixed rites of the Christian Church. His- 
tory goes backward in its researches till it can go no 
further ; but there, amidst the glimmer of those early times, 
we behold these preestablished forms ; and when it is con- 
sidered how difficult it is to impose new institutions and cus- 
toms upon any established organization, it is at least rational 
to infer, that, whatever alterations or additions these rites 
may have suffered in their transmission through three cen- 
turies of time, there must have been some forms in use on 

46 Dr. Brett (Collection of the Principal Liturgies, etc., with a Disserta- 
tion upon Them, London, 1838,) gives us translations of the communion 
and baptismal services of all these ancient rituals ; and the dates and his- 
tories he assigns to them are generally admitted by the learned, and even 
by the Oxford Tractarians (Tract 63d) who are jealous of all ecclesiastical 
researches but their own. See also Stillingfleet (Orig. Brit. pp. 237-241) 
and a good article in the Christian Examiner, vol. xxxvii. pp. 350-370, for 
Nov. 1844. Wheatly (Rational Illustration of the Book of Common. 
Prayer), Biddulph (Essay on Select Parts of the Liturgy of the Church of 
England), Mosheim (Ecclesiastical History), Schaff (History of the Christian 
Church), Bishop Bull (on the Ancient Liturgies), Bishop Hopkins (Primi- 
tive Church compared with Protestant Episcopal Church of the Present 
Day), with many similar works, as well as the works of the Greek and 
Latin Fathers so far as they relate to the subject, have been constantly 
employed in the composition of this portion of the current chapter. 



556 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL. 



which these subsequent sacramental services were based. 
There is no man hving, indeed, who can mention a solitary 
period since the days of the Saviour, and then knowingly 
declare that, at that period, no such forms were used. Nor 
can any man mention a period, from the date of these early 
liturgies to the present moment, when forms of this character 
have not been employed. It is well known, that John Calvin 
was the only one of the Lutheran reformers, and the first 
man in the history of the universal Church, who undertook to 
reduce all the services of religious worship to the extempo- 
raneous method ; and yet Calvin himself, in after years, not 
only acknowledged the indefinable antiquity of formal rites, 
so far as the two sacraments are concerned, but he proceeded 
so far as to compose a liturgy for the use of those of his fol- 
lowers, who preferred this style of performing these sacred 
acts. John Knox also prepared a liturgy for the Presby- 
terians of Scotland; Baxter wrote one for the Puritans of 
England; and some of the Puritan churches of the present 
day, in England and in the United States, have returned so 
far on the highway to Rome as to go through with their 
entire public worship according to printed forms. The 
Puritan churches generally, however, both Orthodox and 
Unitarian, not only have no written forms of prayer, even in 
the celebration of the sacraments, but resolutely condemn 
formal worship of every sort as altogether popish. They 
forget that the existence and use of forms can be traced to a 
period when there never had been acknowledged by the 
Church such a personage as a pope ; and they forget that the 
Lord's Prayer, at least, always existed in a written form, and 
that it was always repeated as w T e find it in the sacred books. 
Formal prayer, indeed, is as old as the Church itself. Not- 
only was the Lord's Prayer prescribed by the Author of the 
Church, but there is certainly one instance on record, in that 
historic summary of the apostolic Church known as the Acts, 
wb.cn the disciples united in common prayer. The inspired 



OF KEUGIOUS LITE AND WOESHIP. 



557 



account of the transaction is, that Peter and John, when dis- 
missed from the council of priests by whom they had been 
arraigned and threatened for preaching in the name of Jesus, 
" went to their own company and reported all that the chief 
priests and elders had said unto them. And when they 
heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one 
accord, and said: 'Lord, thou art God, which hast made 
heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is who, 
by the mouth of thy servant David, hast said, ' Why did the 
heathen rage and the people imagine vain things ? The 
kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered 
together against the Lord, and against his Christ for of a 
truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed 
(both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the 
people of Israel were gathered together) for to do whatso- 
ever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be 
done : And now, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant 
unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy 
word, by stretching forth thy hand to heal, and that signs 
and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child 
Jesus." This is the exact language of that apostolic prayer. 
It was uttered at once, on the coining in of the two apostles, 
by the whole congregation of the Church of Christ, with 
one " voice " " with one accord," and must therefore have 
been imparted by immediate inspiration, or followed a set 
form previously prepared, but was in either case a form of 
common prayer. 47 

It is positively certain, indeed, that forms of prayer ^eie 
used by the Christian Church from the very day of its 
origin ; and it is equally true, that these forms were at first 
employed only on the most solemn occasions, such as the 

47 Wheatly (Eational Illustrrtion of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 10) 
thinks the disciples here used a precomposed form; but Bp. Jebb (Sacr. 
Lit. p. 132) supposes it to have been " poured forth at once by the whole 
Christian people under the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit." 



558 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



administration of the sacraments, leaving the ordinary- 
worship of every congregation to be extemporaneous. 
Nearly every one of the most ancient fathers looked upon 
the Lord's Prayer as a form appointed for the whole Christ- 
ian world ; and they also regarded the prayer of the apostles, 
at the time of the liberation of John and Peter, as an 
authority for the precomposition of other prayers for times 
and seasons more than commonly important ; but it is now 
very clear from all that can be gathered of the primitive era 
of the Church, that all the formal petitions were originally 
connected with, the sacramental services of Baptism and the 
Supper. The very names of the earliest liturgies are enough 
to demonstrate this fact ; for they were not at first called by 
any title which could make them cover or include the whole 
of public worship. All the works of this character, from 
their first appearance to the times of Pope Gelasius, were 
entitled sacramentaria, being thus evidently designated as 
collections of religious offices to be used in connection with 
the sacraments, which, at the beginning, were only the two 
which have been mentioned ; and the compilation of Gregory 
the Great, who has been seen to have revised and enlarged 
the Roman ritual, was styled by him the Roman Sacramen- 
tary. This work, it is true, as well as some of its immediate 
predecessors, multiplied the number of the sacraments, and 
extended the formal worship over a large part of the time of 
public service originally set apart for extemporaneous devo- 
tions. The name remained while the thing called by it had 
grown and changed ; and when, in process of time, the entire 
service of Romanism had become formal, and there was no 
longer a distinction between the styles of sacramental and of 
ordinary worship, the works containing this system of written 
devotion were still known as Sacrammtaries, just as the old 
classic name of Consul remains in use, while the office it 
points out retains not a vestigo of what it was when the 
word was first employed. "We have seen, therefore, what 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



559 



proof there is that the greater part of the public services of 
the Church, in its earliest days, was spontaneous, unpreme- 
ditated, unwritten ; we have seen, however, that a part of it 
was always formal ; and this name of sacramentary, given to 
the first compilations of written prayers, is a sufficient de- 
monstration that the formal portion was that which was used 
in the administration of the sacraments, and that all the rest 
of it was left to the guidance and inspiration of the moment. 
That this was the original distinction between the extempo- 
raneous and the formal parts of worship, is further evident 
from all that is known of the old Gallic ritual, as ancient as 
any ritual known in history, copies of which existed up to 
the days of Petavius, and of which there are numerous frag 
ments remaining to the present time, but not a fragment 
which did not evidently form a part of the celebration of the 
sacraments. There is no proof in the world, indeed, that the 
old Gallic ritual, which grew up independently and ah ori- 
gine from the practice of the apostles, contained a solitary 
prayer not connected with the sacramental service. The 
same thing is true of the service of the original Church of 
England, of which there is not a scrap existing, which could 
have had connection with anything but the administration of 
these several rites. The inference is resistless, therefore, 
that no other written offices were used in the British and 
Gallic churches ; and this is the same thing as to say that 
none were given to them by those who established these 
churches in the very age of the apostles. The history of the 
British, Gallic, and Roman rituals, indeed, come together in 
the common declaration, that, originally, the ordinary wor- 
ship of the people in every Christian congregation was ex- 
temporaneous, and that the sacraments were administered 
by forms previously written for the purpose. 48 

48 Orig. Brit. pp. 221-244. It is singular that Mosheim, (Eccl. Hist, 
vol. i., part ii., sec. vi., p. 45), in pretending to give the order and sub- 
stance of the original Christian worship, omits altogether the Lord's Sup 



560 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



If the reader will now look, even for a moment, into the 
ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United 
States, which follows the animus of universal Methodism, 
he will see that, complimentary as it may be to the sagacity 
and learning of its authors, it makes precisely this same dis- 
tinction between the two portions of religious worship. 
There are forms for the rite of baptism ; there are forms for 
the celebration of the Supper; these forms are prescribed 
and enjoined for the common use of all congregations on all 
occasions ; and these are the only forms positively enjoined, 
some occasional offices being only recommended, both min- 
isters and people being thus left free to perforin every other 
act of worship, private, social, public, according to the 
impulses of that inner life, which constitutes the substance of 
religion, and is the central force that has given existence, 
and system, and success to their religious movement. These 
forms are borrowed, not from Romanism, as our unlearned 
opponents affirm, but from the English ritual, which was in 
turn originally taken from the Gallic : and the Gallic, as has 
been shown, has as just a claim to originality, and to a con- 
formity to the apostolic customs, as any that can be pointed 
to on the page of history. I will not say that the ritual of 
Methodism is absolutely apostolic ; but I do openly declare 
that, according to all the facts now known, its twofold divi- 
sion is based upon the best instructions of history and of 
human reason. Its forms are nearly identical, as far as they 
go, with those of the Church of England. It is a revision 
and simplification of the English ritual, those parts which can 
be traced to the earliest antiquity being retained, and those 
portions evidently borrowed from Rome being eliminated and 

per, which is known to have been celebrated every Sunday, and fails to 
point out the connection between this sacrament and the prayers he men- 
tions as having been read by the presiding presbyter or bishop, when both 
things are clearly enough portrayed by the authorities he cites at the 
bottom of his page ! 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WOESHD?. 



561 



condemned. Though its authors may not have read, nor 
even seen, the existing fragments of the old Gallic service, it 
is a singular fact, corroborative of its apostolic character, 
that it corresponds very closely to that very ancient ritual, a 
m of the formulae- of the two commimions being often 
alike to the smallest sentences and words. It is not only 
thus pure, ancient, and almost apostolic ; but it is brief, 
simple, and impressive. It gives stability, dignity, strength, 
and even beauty to the general worship of the denomination ; 
while the extemporaneous portion leaves the most unbounded 
latitude for the freest expression of the daily religion of the 
masses of the people ; and both together constitute a system, 
which, as the world knows, has now for almost a century 
embodied and preserved a living piety, a personal and prac- 
tical experience, that has performed wonders in melting 
down and assimilating whole communities and regions to 
itself, and in spreading the idea of a heartfelt, spiritual, 
ideal Christianity over and among the nations of the globe. 

3. The ritual portion of the worship of Methodism, while 
cutting off all popish additions and corruptions, is sufficiently 
fall and ample. Our brethren of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church of the United States, I know, make quite a show of 
moderation as to the length of their liturgic services, by 
dwelling upon the extent to which they have gone in abbre- 
viating that of the Church of England. They profess to 
have taken the ma media, as they say — the middle path — 
between Puritanism and the Prayer-book of Charles the 
Second. But if they will look at the preface to that volume, 
they will rind that this is the very argument it employs itself, 
in comparing its diminished liturgy with the Roman 
Breviary. Nay, the Romanist himself takes his turn in 
boastiug of standing on middle ground, when his four 
duodecimo volumes of services are laid by the side of the 
twenty-one folio volumes of the oriental worship ; and these 
orientalists themselves have just as good a claim to the 

24* 



562 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



via media argument, when their worship of one God and 
two or three hundred saints is contrasted with the old pagan 
ritual, which had as many gods to worship, and as many 
forms of devotion as there were abstract ideas in Europe, and 
memorable men in Asia, and useful animals and vegetables 
on the soil of Africa. The Greek Catholic, indeed, does 
really stand on the middle ground between the ancient 
pagans and the modern Romans ; the Roman occupies the 
middle ground between the Catholics of Greece and the 
Church of England ; the Church of England holds the middle 
ground between the Roman Catholics and the Protestant 
Episcopal denomination of this country; the Protestant 
Episcopalian, in turn, takes the middle ground between the 
Church of England and the Methodist Episcopal Church of 
the United States ; and this last body, which fairly represents 
the ideas of universal Methodism, maintains the middle 
ground between the Protestant Episcopalian and the Puri- 
tan. But this middle-ground argument, in whatever hands 
found, amounts to nothing. Puritanism itself could just as 
well say that it occupies the via media between formal wor- 
ship and no worship whatsoever. There is no position 
possible, or conceivable, than which there might not be 
positions higher and lower, as well as worse and better. 

If there is any merit at all, however, in this principle of 
midway wisdom, it is most justly due to the worship of 
Methodism, which is not only a compromise but a union and 
a harmony of the two extremes of extemporaneous and 
formal worship. It is a compromise and a union of the 
virtues of both without the extremes of either. It is a com- 
promise and a union in which extemporaneous prayer has the 
fullest scope to do all it can do under any circumstances, and 
in which formal prayer has as much license as has been given 
it by reason, by original custom, or by revelation. It is a 
compromise and a union according to which the individuals 
of every congregation have ample room for personal suppli- 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



563 



cation, and by which the congregation itself, in its own indi- 
vidual capacity, has its particular opportunities for devotion. 
It is a compromise and a union, which, while it maintains the 
personality, with equal efficiency provides for the unity of all 
the members of every congregation. But what is best of all, 
it is a compromise, a union, a harmony, embracing every act 
of worship ordained by the precepts and example of the 
Saviour, received and followed by the apostles, as well as 
perpetuated in the customs of the Church during the age of 
its uncorrupted purity, simplicity and fervor. It agrees with 
the primitive Church, not only in retaining the six fundamen- 
tal exercises of all Christian worship, and in the historic dis- 
tribution of them into what is extemporaneous and what is 
formal, but in restricting the formal to those occasions, as 
well as to those limits, which are sanctioned by everything 
we know of the Biblical and apostolic practice. 

Methodism can say to all the ritualistic denominations 
without exception : There is nothing in our liturgy that is 
not found in yours. Protestant Episcopalians, English 
churchmen, Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics, must acknow- 
ledge, therefore, that, so far as we have a ritual, that ritual 
is right. The only complaint from this source must be, then, 
that Methodism has not enough of this sort of worship. To 
the Puritan, on the other hand, who complains that it has 
too much of it, as all true and heartfelt worship is extempo- 
raneous, Methodism makes answer : As preaching, according 
to the Scriptures, and according to your own standard 
writers, 49 is a part of public worship, why do you not make 
it also extemporaneous ? How can your written sermons be 

49 Dr. John Owen (Works, vol. iv. p. 353) enumerates preaching among 
the other parts of public worship. All the Puritan writers do the 
same ; but one authority is quoted for the sake of fastening the argu- 
ment. After the reading of the Scripture lessons come preaching in all 
the ancient churches, excepting only that of Rome, where the bishop 
did not preach till the reign of Leo the First. See Origin. Brit. p. 237. 



564 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



true and heartfelt? Singing, also, is another part of religious 
worship. Why do you precompose hymns and tunes for 
common use, instead of letting every man sing extempo- 
raneously, without following any forms of poetry or music ? 
Why halt with your reformation just where you do ? Why 
not carry your principle through to its legitimate results ? 
But if singing precomposed hymns and tunes, and the read- 
ing of precomposed discourses, can be true and heartfelt 
worship, why may not the use of precomposed petitions be 
equally true and heartfelt ? You employ books in singing, 
because many persons, a whole choir or congregation, are 
desired to unite in this religious service. We employ a 
book, on certain devotional occasions, for the very same 
reason. We reject the book in preaching, because only one 
person speaks, and his free utterance has no need to be 
restrained. There is such a thing, too, as individual singing, 
where a person may improvise both his words and notes. 
But this would be worse than jargon in public worship. 
Concord in music, and accord in prayer, call alike for written 
forms ; and the one, when intended for that part of religious 
devotion that is common to the congregation, is just as scrip- 
tural and rational as the other. 

While Methodism is so ample in its ritual, as to embrace 
every occasion set forth by reason or revelation as calling 
for precomposition, it guards the limits of that ritual so well, 
that it is suffered to include not one of even the doubtful 
additions made by the liturgic denominations. It adopts for 
its sacramental services only the few simple forms, which, 
through the English and Gallic rituals, it can clearly trace to 
the church of the apostles ; and it rejects and throws off all 
the confessions, creeds, and other formularies, which have so 
long disfigured and rendered unpopular and tedious the ser- 
vices of all Romanizing churches. The confession and abso- 
lution of the Church of England, and of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church of this country, it condemns as a relic of 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



565 



the papal apostasy. The Athanasian Creed it casts off as a 
specimen of Roman bigotry and intolerance. The Apostle's 
Creed it expunges, because the retention of it would foster a 
spirit of pious fraud, as every scholar knows that that 
instrument was never heard of by the apostles, while the 
name given it in all prayer-books imposes this deception 
upon the public. All Saints' days are renounced, the cele- 
bration of the birth-day of Jesus himself being not enjoined, 
not only because the exact date of that event is lost, but 
because it is known to have been the point of departure 
from which the whole system of saintly worship took its 
origin. Methodism has no calendar. No saint, from the 
days of Stephen to those of Mr. Wesley, who was as good 
a man as any of the saintly list, is known as such to Method- 
ism. Ask of the best informed Methodist his views of 
Advent Sundays, of Lent, of Epiphany, of Ascension-day, 
of Whit-Sunday, of the days Septuagesima, Sexagesima, 
Quinquagesima, of the days of the Purification of Our Lady, 
of the Annunciation of Our Lady, and of all the similar 
shadows of popery still clouding the ritual of the European 
and American Episcopal denominations, and he Avill frankly 
tell you that he looks upon them as idle ceremonies, or that 
he knows and cares nothing at all about them. A sense of 
God's presence in his heart is so strong within him, and his 
soul is so brilliant with the light of genuine religion, that all 
Sundays are to him Advent Sundays, all Fridays are Good 
Fridays, all days are Ascension-days and Epiphanies, and his 
recollection of his former life is yet so full of sorrowing 
regret, that he is ready, on every Wednesday, to sprinkle 
ashes upon his head, if that were not a mere childish custom, 
or a dangerous recollection. The whole frame-work of the 
papal year, still maintained by the Episcopalians of this 
country and of Europe, he has cast off, demolished, tram- 
pled under foot, and finally forgotten. His mind carries 
nothing in it but the civil year of the country where he lives, 



566 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



which he endeavors to fill up, clay by clay, as the world turns 
upon its axis, with a pure and practical devotion proceeding 
directly from his heart; and this worship, so ample as to 
cover every hour of his existence, and meet every demand 
of revelation, is not so redundant, is not so divided into 
periods, and bears no such nomenclature, that he must be 
constantly reminded of superstitions which he professedly 
rejects, but is free from all papal reminiscences and sugges- 
tions, and is commemorative of his gratitude, obedience, and 
love to only God himself. 

4. The worship of Methodism is emphatically a free wor- 
ship, there being no restraints upon its members from a 
stereotyped liturgy covering the whole body of their devo- 
tions, and no restrictions as to age, condition, or sex, from 
its established customs. With the single exception of the 
sacraments, which require the fixedness of forms to make 
them permanent, and the guidance of forms to render their 
observance in large congregations orderly and harmonious, 
the utmost latitude is given to all persons feeling the 
impulses of a heartfelt religion. 

In the liturgic denominations, the individual has no choice 
but to follow the current of formal prayer from the begin- 
ning to the end of the common service ; no such thing is 
known among them as individual prayer ; the heart of the 
worshiper may be ever so much burdened with its peculiar 
sorrows, or ever so jubilant with its particular raptures, but 
everything personal to him must be subdued ; he must 
smother every emotion arising from his personal experience ; 
and his spirit must flatten down to the dead level of a mono- 
tonous ritual, prepared by those who never knew his condi- 
tion, and which admits of no possible variation. 

In the Puritan churches, on the other hand, the worship is 
free enough as to the opportunities for individual expression, 
but it has a restriction of another kind, which finds no 
counterpart in the denominations following forms of prayer. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



567 



It excludes one-half of every congregation from all active par- 
ticipation in a large portion of the religious services. Among 
Episcopalians of every order, from Methodism to Romanism, 
woman enjoys her equal right of joining, and that audibly, 
in every exercise of the house of God. She may not only 
sing, but pray, and exhort, according to the customs of her 
church. The same privilege was granted her in the syna- 
gogues, and even in the temple, of the J ews. In them, it is 
true, a distinct part of the structure was allotted to her 
use ; in the synagogue a low railing, and in the temple a low 
wall, protected her from the intrusions of promiscuous 
crowds ; in the earliest churches, also, her person Avas 
defended from improper contact by similar arrangements ; 
but in all alike, and on every occasion, she enjoyed the 
utmost liberty of worship, her voice being heard, not only 
in the songs and psalms of praise, but in prayer and exhorta- 
tion. The Puritan, however, robs her of these rights. By 
a misunderstanding and misconstruction of the language of 
St. Paul upon the behavior appropriate to woman at a 
particular time and place, which has no reference whatever 
to the duties of religious worship, the Puritan churches of 
this country and of England exclude her from the actual 
praises of God, except as she may join in them by the con- 
sent of silence, in listening to the devotions of her imperious 
lord. The same exclusion of the sex is practiced in all 
heathen countries, where woman is not suffered to mingle 
with the male portion of the population, either in the tem- 
ples, in social life, or even in the domestic circle. In these 
lands she is regarded as an inferior being, as a slave, as a 
mere appanage to the estate of manhood, without rights, 
and without a soul. The Hebrew nation, which received 
the Old Testament as its constitution and statutory law, 
released her from this degrading bondage, and the New 
Testament raised her to an equality with man. Throughout 
the universal Church of Christ, and in every age, with the 



568 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



single exception of the Puritans and Presbyterians, she has 
always held the rank of an equal partner with the other sex, 
and has enjoyed equal rights and privileges in the house of 
God. Why, then, should, the Presbyterians and Puritans 
reverse the general custom of the Church of God, before 
and after Christ, and in every land, thrusting woman back 
again to her condition, so far as religious worship is con- 
cerned, not much above her state when she was accounted 
an inferior being, if not a slave ? Simply because, as the 
Puritans and Presbyterians inform us, a single Apostle, in a 
single instance, for a singular reason, laid an injunction of 
silence upon her, not in religious worship, but in respect to 
some ecclesiastical proceedings touching upon public busi- 
ness : " Let your women," says St. Paul, " keep silence in 
the churches : for it is not permitted unto them to speak ; 
but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith 
the law ; and if they will learn anything, let them ask their 
husbands at home ; for it is a shame for women to speak in 
the church." Such is the brief and solitary declaration of 
the Apostle, made to the solitary congregation at Corinth, 
where the laxity of social intercourse of the sexes had caused 
the city to be a reproach to human nature over all the world, 
calling for special vigilance and particular regulations in the 
assemblies of the Christians, on which the Presbyterians and 
Puritans base their rule of exclusiveness toward woman, 
which they would make general and perpetual in the Church 
of God. There is no good reason for changing what is evi- 
dently special into something universal, even if the injunction 
were plainly a restriction on the freedom of religious wor- 
ship. But it is not such a restriction. The author of the 
language quoted had no reference whatever to the services 
of devotion ; for he immediately goes on to say, not that 
woman must not prophesy or exhort and pray in the meet- 
ings of the Church, but that they must not speak in public 
after the bold and lewd manner of their heathen neighbors : 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



569 



" Every man," says he, "praying or prophesying with his 
head covered, dishonoreth his head ; but every woman, that 
prayeth or prophesy eth with her head uncovered dishonoreth 
her head." Whatever is meant, therefore, by the previous 
injunction of the Apostle, it did not include praying or 
prophesying, or praying and speaking as the men did in the 
religious assemblies, for both are here expressly allowed to 
woman in the very place where the injunction had been 
applied. The very passage, therefore, which has been so 
long employed by Puritans and Presbyterians for the exclu- 
sion of women from two parts of the religious worship of 
the Church, is a direct and plain authority for them to speak 
and pray in public ; and yet, this is the only text in revela- 
tion from which any one pretends to support the rule forbid- 
ding them, while the practice of the universal Church, with 
the sole exceptions mentioned, is on the side of the equal 
right of woman to every exercise of devotion. 

So singular and exceptional is this rule of exclusiveness, 
indeed, that those setting it up without authority have never 
carried it, have never dared to carry it, to its logical results. 
If women everywhere are forbidden to join audibly in the 
services of the Church, why do the Presbyterians and Puri- 
tans suffer them to sing. Singing is as much a part of the 
public worship of the house of God as either praying or 
exhorting. Why admit and even welcome them to one part, 
and exclude them from the other two ? Nay, what is there 
in the nature of a man, or in the nature of a woman, or in 
the law of their connection, or in the structure of human 
society, that makes it reasonable for women to mix in pro- 
miscuous gatherings, and to employ freely their faculty of 
discourse on all manner of topics of conversation, but which 
does not suffer them to open their mouths, in similar assem- 
blages, on the subject of religion ? What is there in religion 
itself, so peculiar, so remarkable, that a man may talk of it 
with all freedom to many or to few, in doors or out, but that 



570 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



it may not be mentioned, except in the privacy of her own 
secret chamber, by her who shares more largely in its present 
benefits than man, but who has had the misfortune to be 
born a woman ? Does the God of nature, any more than 
the God of revelation, make any such distinctions, either 
between the male and the female, or between the fit subjects 
of their speech, as to include the one and not the other in the 
right of speaking openly and freely of religion ? When a 
score, or a hundred, or a thousand of both sexes meet, on 
any social occasion, or for any purpose not professedly reli- 
gious, the voice of woman is always more than welcome. 
She talks ; she sings ; and she is listened to with admiration. 
She is the aroma, the balm of all the flowers, to every asso- 
ciation of the sexes. Her presence is like s the presence of an 
angel; and she renders attractive everything that she is 
suffered to make her own, or to bring within the limits of 
her influence. The gift of speech, wherever she is allowed 
its use, never shows its full perfection, never comes forth 
with the whole of its expressive sweetness, except when it 
drops from her soft and mellow Hp. In music she is acknow- 
ledged to stand preeminent ; she takes as her own the lead- 
ing part ; the very soul of the song is hers ; her full, clear, 
joyous voice is heard ringing out the high melody above all 
the voices ; she commands the ear and takes the heart of her 
rapt audience; and in her victory the art receives the honors 
of its loftiest triumph. Why may not that voice in speech, as 
well as that voice in song, with equal propriety be lent to 
add its attractions to the subject of religion? May not she, 
who comes nearest to our conceptions of an inhabitant of 
heaven, freely address her appeals to earth, in behalf of what 
constitutes the life of the celestials ? Does not the theme 
especially belong to her? Is it not peculiarly her own? 
And can any one tell why it is, that, in the Puritan and 
Presbyterian denominations, every social gathering is abun- 
dantly attractive, excepting those professedly religious, if 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



571 



the reason is not found in the singular fact, that they nearly 
exclude from all their religious worship the moving and 
melting voice of woman ? 

Whatever may be the responses rendered to these inter- 
rogatories by the denominations mentioned, or by the reason- 
ings and customs of any age or people, it is clear enough 
that Methodism has always had but one rule and one practice 
in relation to this subject. In the very hour of her origin, 
and from that day forward, the world has read upon her 
banner the inscription which a gifted English poetess has 
unhistorically ascribed to the practice and temper of the 
Pilgrims — "freedom to worship God." Whatever there is 
of truth and of good in the recent struggles of society in 
relation to the rights and wrongs of woman, Methodism 
stands forth as the mother of the enterprise ; for within her 
inclosure woman was never called to bear a burden not 
equally borne by the stronger sex ; and she has thus not 
only taken the lead, but set the example, in breaking off the 
shackles forged by the Puritan and Presbyterian spirit, in 
redeeming woman from every unjust and narrow custom, and 
in setting her on a level with her former master. If woman, 
therefore, does not feel thankful to Methodism, it can only be 
because she does not understand its history. And Methodism 
has an equal reason for gratitude to woman. It was the voice 
of woman that was first of all commissioned to proclaim, even 
to the apostles, the doctrine and the fact of the resurrection. 
Woman was called to evangelize the evangelists, to carry the 
original message to the messengers of our religion, and to be 
the first preacher of a completed atonement, of a finished sal- 
vation, with a particular commission to those, who, by 
receiving and repeating the fact thus declared, were to over- 
turn the world ; and could we now, after the lapse of 
centuries, during which the pure spirit of Christianity has 
been more or less obscured by the prejudices of many gene- 
rations, look right back to that first reunion of the eleven, 



572 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



and of the hundred and twenty disciples still trustful of the 
truth of their Master's sayings, and see the little assembly, 
and behold the two Marys rising to their feet, and hear them 
make the first proclamation of a risen Saviour, and, it may 
be, hear the sobs and audible thanksgivings of the company, 
it seems to me that we should have before us the true and 
authoritative type of such scenes as are now repeated only in 
the Wesley an division of the Church of Christ. This type 
of the worth and work of woman, at all events, has been 
fully recognized and blessed in the Wesleyan movement, 
from the day of its origin to the present time. Methodism 
has made the most of woman in every department of its 
enterprise ; and woman has more than returned the benefit, 
by lending her nature and her name, her virtues and her 
voice, to grace the progress of a cause, which was the first, 
in modern times, to exalt her to the freedom and glory that 
were shed for her from the uplifting of the cross. 50 

5. It was no less a person than the celebrated Dr. Chalmers, 
who first pronounced Methodism to be " Christianity in 
earnest ;" and he seems to have obtained this opinion of its 
character by an attendance upon its worship. Methodism 
would by no means arrogate this eulogy entirely to itself, as 
if there were no other earnest Christians in the world ; but 
it certainly is the leading tendency of the system to encourage 
mankind to make personal religion the chief employment of 
life, and to worship the universal Father, not with a lifeless 
formalism, or with an informal lifelessness, but in spirit and 

60 Woman, among the early Christians, had the fullest freedom in the 
house of worship ; and the consequence was, not only that she added 
vastly to the success of Christianity in those times, but her own character 
was wonderfully elevated and her genius developed by this equality of 
right. It is said that Libanius, on seeing the mother of St. Chrysostom, a 
most noble woman, exclaimed : "What women these Christians have!" 
The same cause is producing the same effects within the pale of Methodism. 
See SchafTs Hist. Christ. Church, p. 111. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



573 



in truth. It receives and represents religion as so essential, 
so desirable, so "beautiful, that any one can afford to make it 
the central and controlling object of his existence. It 
accepts the books of revelation as the demonstrated Word 
of God ; it suffers no doubt upon this fundamental truth ; 
and it then receives the several elements of the system of 
truth therein contained as so many established facts. They 
are not facts to be made the subject of speculative confidence, 
as if it should premise, for the sake of an argument, that they 
are as they have been revealed. They are taken as settled 
demonstrations, concerning which, as to their being facts, there 
is no chance for controversy. Wesley did not say : " Grant 
that I am a sinner ; grant that there is a hereafter ; grant 
that my sinfulness, unless removed, may render that future a 
state of misery; grant that Jesus may have been the 
Messiah ; grant that his death may be my only hope ; let 
me, then, not despise his mercy; let me not utterly disregard 
his overtures ; let me, on the contrary, live as if his system 
of salvation may turn out to be my only means of safety." 
No such half-way, luke-warm, compromising language 
escaped his lips. His words were not words of hypothesis, 
of doubt, of a lingering disbelief united to a sense of the pos- 
sibility of his being and acting in mistake. They were alto- 
gether on one side of the great question of the necessity of 
practical religion in order to external life : " I am a sinner ; 
I must be born again; my present conduct will certainly 
determine my condition in the future world ; there is no sal- 
vation from sin, no restoration to holiness, no religion, no 
heaven, except I find it in Jesus Christ ; him have I accepted, 
and do accept, as my only Saviour ; and I know that by him 
I am now in the possession of eternal life." 

This is the Wesleyan mode of receiving and professing 
Christianity. It is the mode of stating the question of 
receiving and professing it in public worship. The minister 
does not say, in his sermon, that the Bible may be true, and, 



574 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



therefore, that every man will find it prudent not to over- 
look it; he declares the truth of revelation with as much 
assurance as he would the deductions of mathematics ; he 
believes fully, to the utmost, every word it utters ; he holds 
his audience before him, not as if they were listening to 
human speculations, but as if they were giving ear to the 
very accents of God himself ; his appeals descend upon them 
as if he beheld himself standing on the brink of eternity, 
whence he looked down into the final habitations of the lost, 
and upward, full and clear, upon the glories of the heavenly 
land; he speaks from the most absolute belief, and from 
that internal experience, which amounts to knowledge ; he 
tells his hearers that he knows revelation to be a reality, and 
the religion it reveals to be a truth, because he carries the 
evidence, the proof, the conclusion, within his heart ; that 
same consciousness, by which he determines whether he 
loves or hates a human being — his neighbor, his parent, or 
his child — causes him to know that he does not hate, but 
loves, his God, his Redeemer, and the members of the 
Church ; he not only knows, in this way, that he has himself 
passed from death to life, but holds in his hand the key of 
universal knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom and of 
the things of God ; and from this experimental, heartfelt, 
conscious certainty springs that marked earnestness of 
speech, by which he is everywhere distinguished from all 
other clergymen, whenever he addresses the people, or calls 
upon the universal Father, in the house of prayer. 

But he finds the membership before him as warm in their 
devotions as himself. They, too, have accepted the Bible as 
the ultimatum of the revelation, and of all probable revela- 
tions, of God to man. They look for nothing further ; they 
want nothing more ; and they receive what is given without 
a doubt. They have been taught to believe, and they do 
believe, that personal religion is the one thing needful for 
this world and for that which is to come ; that there is no 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



575 



way of obtaining and preserving it but by giving their souls 
entirely to it ; and that they might better suffer the loss of 
everything dear in life, and fall upon nothing but misfortunes 
and afflictions for their few years here, than to fail of " working 
out their salvation," and " making their calling and election 
sure V for the eternal state. And yet, they renounce nothing 
there is in the world but sin. They seek nothing in the 
world but purity of heart and life. All that lies between these 
two extremes — all that can come to them of real happiness 
from the physical, intellectual, and social world — every good 
gift that can reach them from the kingdoms of creation, pro- 
vidence and grace — everything beautiful, true, and good — 
they regard as the rightful property of the follower of 
Christ. All that lies outside of these extremes — all forms of 
folly and of sin — they consider as of no value to the soul. 
They consider them as entirely detrimental to its happiness. 
In renouncing the world, therefore, they do it heartily, as 
they think they are suffering no loss of anything that could, 
by any possibility, have done them any good. In accepting 
the Christian character, they retain everything, as they 
think, that the natural man himself could really have enjoyed, 
while they make a conscious addition of what is ever after a 
well-spring of real heartfelt comfort, which the world can 
neither give nor take away. They think they know, too, by 
the evidence of their own consciousness applied to the proofs 
furnished in the Word of God, and by the witness of the 
Spirit, that they have made this renunciation of sin, that 
they have accepted this heaven-born character, that they 
have thus advanced from the empire of death to the posses- 
sion of everlasting life. So deep, so vivid, so real is this 
work of God within them, that they never speak of their 
state in Christ as something which they hope, but as a settled 
reality which they have been made to Jcnoiv. They declare, 
in the words of scripture, that they " know in whom they 
have believed ;" that they " know they have passed from 



576 METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 

death to life ;" and that it has been given them " to know 
the mysteries of the kingdom " into which hey have been 
introduced. They therefore receive the ^ord spoken to 
them from the pulpit, with an apetite, w^h a zest, unknown 
to a doubting, feeble, and sickly faith. They enter the house 
of God, and engage in all its services, not like philosophers 
whose business is to inquire and deny, but like men of 
science, who treat facts as facts, and act accordingly. They 
mean precisely what they say and do; they are in earnest; 
and their earnestness is not a mere fashion fallen into by the 
fathers of Methodism, and handed down by example from 
generation to generation. The cause which produced it in 
Wesley, produced it in all his followers ; the same cause still 
acts from the center to the circumference of the great and 
growing movement ; and that cause is the internal demon- 
stration of the reality of the teachings o*f revelation which 
every true member of the denomination carries in the 
deej>est recesses of his heart. Satisfied beyond a scruple of 
the doctrines of the sinless creation, of the fall of the race, 
of the sacrifice for sin, of the universal atonement, of the 
necessity of personal cooperation in order to salvation, of the 
exact correspondence of our future condition of joy or woe 
with the decision and character of the present world, and of 
the brevity and uncertainty of the space given us for the 
accomplishment of ends of such dread concern, they cannot 
enter upon the services of religion as Christians of weaker 
faith, of less thorough experience, may do, but must speak 
and act with earnestness and ardor corresponding to what 
they know and feel. 

But the marked earnestness of Methodism is not denied ; 
its worship has been regarded as lying more open to the 
charge of extravagance ; but the extravagance of any one's 
conduct, or proceedings, is a question that must be settled 
by comparing his acts with the motives he has to prompt 
him to greater or less exertions. A man flying from a falling 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 577 

edifice, or escaping from any evil, will exert himself in pro- 
portion to his sense of the imminence and amount of the 
threatened danger. So a person in the pursuit of a certain 
good, or in the act of retaining what he has, will show by his 
vigor the estimate he sets upon it. This is as true of our 
conduct in relation to religion, as to any other thing ; and it 
must be the logical conclusion, that, as a general statement, 
men who have the practical experience of Christianity will 
give an outward expression of it, in worship, in proportion 
to its extent and strength. The first fervors of a man newly 
brought into the possession of personal religion, and the first 
fervors of a new religious movement, will often transgress 
the limits of moderation, and sometimes of every rule of 
taste ; but in the end these improprieties correct themselves. 
~Not only Methodism, but nearly every modern denomina- 
tion, began under great excitement, which led to certain ex- 
cesses not now known among them. The reader will recol- 
lect the extravagances of not a few of the reformers, includ- 
ing such men as Calvin, and Zuingiius, and even Luther, 
which passed away with the lapse of time. He will recollect 
the Anabaptists of Upper Germany, who, in the second stage 
of the Reformation, were a new people of a most wild and 
fanatical disposition, so charged with a sense of the reality 
of revelation as to undertake to disseminate its doctrines by 
the sword, but who have since settled down into a family of 
the most quiet, and orderly, and respectable denominations 
in the world. He will recollect the rant and bombast, the 
irrational and reckless zeal, of the earliest Puritans of Eng- 
land, who, like the exiled Cox at Frankfort, were ready to 
rend the world for a mere question about a prayer-book. 
He will recollect the character of the early followers of 
Robert Brown, a later Puritan, and the founder of Congrega- 
tionalism, whom the great historian of the Church pro- 
nounces " a hot-headed innovator," whose sect is declared, by 
the same author, to have started out " with notions crude 

25 



578 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



and chimerical," which " they maintained and propagated " 
with " a zeal intemperate and extravagant in the highest 
degree," but who have since become, in old England, and 
in New England, remarkable for their sobriety and decency 
in all matters pertaining to religion. 51 The truth is, nearly 
every existing denomination that sprung out of the Roman 
Church has been marked by these excesses; but the real 
worth of a religious idea is never to be determined by a too 
rigid criticism of the outward demonstrations of its original 
asserters and defenders. A youthful society, like a young 
man, or a new-born Christian, is very apt to overdo itself ; 
and it is a fundamental principle, also, that the greater the 
idea, and the deeper its impression, the more exuberant will 
be the zeal and energy of its adherents. This is the principle 
that excuses Zuinglius for drawing the sword in defense of 
the doctrines of the Reformation among the Swiss ; that 
excuses Calvin, as far as he can be excused, for his cruelties 
upon Servetus ; that excuses the latest of the Puritans, who, 
after suffering exile from England for the cause of religious 
liberty — " freedom to worship God " — denied that freedom 
to everybody but themselves, who burnt the witches, bored 
the ears of the Quakers, and banished the Baptists of Massa- 
chusetts, and who did their utmost to shut New England 
against the missionaries of our own denomination. It is this 
principle that excuses the excesses of the current reforma- 
tion among the Presbyterians and Episcopalians of Ireland, 
where every demonstration of the Wesleyan revival has been 
recently reenacted. 

It is this same philosophy, indeed, that excuses the contra- 
dictions of early Methodism, which, though brought into 
existence beneath the academic shades of the profoundest 
and dullest of the British universities, and at once drawing 
to itself some of the deepest and calmest men in England, 

61 Mosheim's Ecc. Hist,, vol. ii., part ii., sec. 3, pp. 116-11*7. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



579 



and all through its history producing a lineage of the same 
class of minds, of which Adam Clarke and Stephen Olin may- 
be taken as representatives for the opposite sides of the 
Atlantic, did, as its truest friends are the most ready to 
admit, like the other sects, run into certain extravagances, 
particularly in their social worship, which every one of her 
most distinguished sons, from Wesley to the present day, 
has most sincerely and heartily condemned ; but time, which 
has done so much in subduing the wild temper of other 
religious bodies, has at last removed, in nearly every part of 
the world, these abuses from our own ; and the Wesleyan 
idea of a true and spiritual worship, which has been shown 
to have been derived to it through the oldest rituals from 
the apostolic times, and which is but a reproduction of the 
ideal of the original worship of Christianity, in which liberty 
and form, individuality and union, variety and stability are 
united, is at this moment making its impression and effecting 
its conquests in every quarter of the globe. Methodism, in 
her true character, would have all her children worship God 
as Moses did, when, with familiarity mixed with fear, he 
took the sandals from his feet, and came close but with awe 
and trembling to the burning bush ; it would give a person- 
ality to each and a unity to all of her adherents ; and it is by 
this freedom of individual devotion, and this harmony and 
dignity of her common worship, with their pervading earn- 
estness of spirit and strength of purpose, that she has accom- 
plished so much in her former history, and hopes so largely 
for the centuries yet to come. 

We have beheld what was included in the simple daily 
ritual of the common mother of all religious denominations. 
We have followed the enlargements and corruptions of that 
ritual in the ante-Roman, Roman and Greek establishments. 
We have traced the origin of the Gallic, English, and 
Methodistic liturgies. Let us now look for a moment on a 
full day of Wesleyan worship, on one of its carnival occa- 



580 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



sions, when the length and breadth of its system may be wit- 
nessed. Let it be such a Sabbath as occurs once a quarter in 
every Wesleyan congregation. The service opens with a 
preparatory assemblage of all the members of the church 
within a given parish, in the capacity of what is called a gen- 
eral class, where every person, male and female, from the 
minister to the youngest member, is expected to rise up and 
give a public statement of the present condition of the work 
of God upon his heart. This is followed by another gather- 
ing of the members of the church and parish, generally on 
the Saturday afternoon, to listen to a discourse intended to 
deepen the conviction of the indispensableness of personal 
piety as a preparation for usefulness in this world and of 
happiness in the world to come ; and this discourse, which is 
delivered by a traveling and presiding presbyter, is accom- 
panied by the usual services of prayer, singing, reading the 
Scriptures, and exhortation. Then succeeds a meeting, intro- 
duced by religious worship, wherein the church meets by its 
constitutional representatives to look over and examine the 
spiritual condition of its members, and to attend to ques- 
tions pertaining to its perpetuity, extension, and support. A 
general prayer-meeting follows, held in the evening, at which 
the church and parish are invited to be present, the object of 
which is to call for the Spirit of God to descend upon the 
people, that their personal piety may be maintained, rejDlen- 
ished, and diffused throughout the parish. The morning of 
the Sabbath-day itself is usually ushered in by the celebra- 
tion of that ancient rite of the Agape, or Love-Feast, which 
the Apostle denominates the Feast of Charity, when all 
those professing religion assemble to manifest their union by 
partaking together of a little bread and water, and thus to 
symbolize the acknowledged central principle of their system, 
which has been seen to be nothing less than universal love. 52 

62 The early love-feasts are described by Justin Martyr and by Tertul- 
lian (Apol. c. 29) as feasts held in the houses of worship just before the 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



581 



Next comes the regular hour of public worship, when the 
officiating clergyman ascends the pulpit, and leads all the 
devotions of the congregation. He reads portions of the 
Scriptures, by him selected for the day, and suited to the 
occasion, to which the people devoutly listen. He engages 
in fervent extemporaneous prayer, calling for the power of 
God to be made manifest in the hearts of his children, and 
among the entire assembly, and to maintain and propagate 
the cause of practical religion in the surrounding community, 
the people following him closely in their thoughts, and every 
now and then assenting to his petition by audible responses, 
such as have always been common among Episcopalians of 
every order. He addresses to the congregation an extempo- 
raneous discourse, which characteristically turns upon some 
topic of practical religion, and comes from the abundance of 
a heart conscious of an inward work of regeneration and of 
the experience of universal love, replete with proofs of the 
possibility and power of this interior life, and closing 
with an appeal in behalf of a personal attention to the means 
of salvation, which the most hardened of an audience find it 
difficult to resist. He reads hymns, both before and after 
the discourse, requesting not only a select number of prac- 
ticed singers, but the whole assembly, to unite in the beauti- 
ful and spiritual service of praising God, and of harmonizing 
and exalting their own spirits, by the sweet influences of 
poetry and music. Then, after a period of rest and separa- 

administration of the Supper. They are now held in the same way, and 
on the same occasion, by the Methodists. "These simple repasts," says' a 
writer in the Christian Examiner (vol. xxxvii. p. 365) " were called among 
the early Christians agapce, or feasts of love, in token of the affection 
Christians bore to each other. In these feasts all differences of earthly 
condition were forgotten. Rich and poor, high and low, masters and ser- 
vants, met together on a level, for in Christ there was no distinction 
founded on earthly condition, but all were one in him." Could any one bet- 
ter state the conception of a modern Methodist love-feast ? So thorough 
was Wesley in his work of recovering the full ideal of original Christianity ; 



582 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



tion for the purposes of physical refreshment, the congrega- 
tion again assembles, in the afternoon, to celebrate that por- 
tion of their public worship which is common, and which is 
regulated by established forms. On entering the house, the 
worshiper beholds within the railing about the pulpit a 
table, and on the table a vessel of water, and the communion 
plate of that particular society, over which loosely hangs a 
white linen covering. The water is there to be used in 
administering baptism to those who may choose to receive it 
by the mode of sprinkling, those not satisfied with this form 
having been previously baptized by pouring, or by immer- 
sion, as Methodism has established a rule, that every mem- 
ber of its body must have renounced the world and professed 
regeneration by the acceptance of this sacrament, but that 
the utmost liberty of opinion shall be granted in relation to 
the manner of receiving it. If there are children to be bap- 
tized, the clergyman begins the rite by an exhortation to the 
people that they join in prayer for the salvation of the candi- 
dates ; then follows a common prayer, the minister reading 
it aloud, and the people responding to its several parts ; then 
a collect taken from the tenth chapter of Mark is read by 
the minister; then the candidates are sprinkled, poured, or 
immersed, as the parents or guardians may have desired, the 
name of each being uttered distinctly before the water is ap- 
plied ; and the service is then closed by the use of the Lord's 
Prayer, in which the congregation unites, after which the 
clergyman is at liberty to add an extemporaneous petition 
adapted to any particular fact or feature of the occasion. In 
the baptism of adult persons, the rite opens with an exhorta- 
tion to pray for the candidates, after which the congregation 
unite in a common prayer read by the minister, and re- 
sponded to by the people at proper periods ; then follows a 
collect taken from the third chapter of John ; the minister 
then addresses an exhortation to the candidates, and asks 
of them if they renounce the world and accept of Christ in 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



583 



that ancient form falsely denominated the apostles' creed, but 
without the mention of this spurious name ; another common 
prayer is then read and responded to by the congregation ; 
the rite is then administered ; and the whole ceremouy is 
concluded, as before, by the Lord's Prayer, to which the 
clergyman may add whatever extemporary supplications he 
may think required by any peculiarity in the candidates, in 
their circumstances, or in the occasion of their thus uniting 
with the followers of Christ. 53 

The sacrament of the Lord's Supper immediately succeeds 
the rite of baptism. It is introduced by the reading of 
certain sentences of Scripture, inciting the congregation to 
works of charity and mercy, during which the people throw 
in their free-Will offerings for the poor and needy. Then 
follow prayer and collects, which are doubtless as ancient as 
the first diffusion of Christianity over the south of Europe. 
The prayer of consecration is very similar to the one still 
extant from the old Gallic ritual. In the distribution of the 
elements, forms are used which can be traced to the first 
ages of the Church ; and the communicants at the same time 
unite in a sacramental song particularly expressive of 
their indebtedness to the sacrificial death of Jesus for the 
work of God which they are conscious has been wrought 

53 There can be no objection to the use of the apostles' creed if the 
deceptive title be left off ; for it is known to have been in use in the Christ- 
ian Church from a remote antiquity ; and there are some writers, such as 
the principal Latin and Greek fathers, Calvin, Luther, Beza, Peter Martyr. - 
and Bullinger, who affirm it to be as ancient as the apostolic age ; but the 
most learned of the English divines, among whom Bps. Pearson and Eurnet 
may be mentioned, give up the claim of its apostolic origin. See Bp. 
Pearson on the Creed and Bp. Burnet on the YHIth Article. There is no 
period of church history when this form was not entitled the " Fides 
Apostolica ;" and it is this cognomen which has deceived so'many of the 
learned ; but the true and obvious translation of the title is, not apostles' 
creed, but the apostolic creed, which signifies simply, that it is apostolic in its 
character — a fact singularlv overlooked by scholars of the utmost repute. 



584: 



METHODISM TEE RECOVERED IDEAL 



within them. The service is closed with the Lord's Prayer, 
repeated in concert by minister and members, and by other 
forms of prayer of great antiquity, as well as by extempora- 
neous petitions adapted to the circumstances of time, place, 
and people. 54 

The evening of the day is devoted to a general meeting, 
in which the minister makes a fervent exhortation to the 
church and congregation, either with or without a text ; and 
he is followed by the more active members, male and female, 
who give God thanks for the work which they feel within 
them, and stir each other up, by mutual exhortations and 
prayer, to those labors which proceed from the living prin- 
ciple of universal love. Not only in these concluding 
exercises, but in those of the whole day, from morning till 
night, the central idea of everything said and done is, that 
the one thing needful in this present life is that personal, 

54 The Gallic prayer of consecration, translated from Mabillon's edition 
of the manuscript found in the queen of Sweden's library, as ancient as 
any known, and from which the English and Methodist consecrating prayer 
was taken, is so similar to the existing form now used, not only in the 
Church of England, but in the Episcopal and Methodist denominations 
of this country, that the reader will be struck with the close resem- 
blance : " Our Lord Jesus Christ, in that night in which he was be- 
trayed, took bread, and giving thanks, he blessed and brake it, and 
gave it to his disciples, saying, take and eat : this is my body which shall 
be delivered for you. Do this, as oft as ye eat it, in remembrance of me. 
Likewise also the cup, after he had supped, saying, this is the cup of the 
New Testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you, and for many, 
for the remission of sins. Do this, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance 
of me. As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye shall show 
the Lord's death, till he shall come in the brightness of the heavens. 
Amen." This is the central portion of the prayer ; these are the words 
employed in the old English and Gallic liturgies from the earliest anti- 
quity ; and it is noticeable, at least, that they are nearly the same terms 
as are still repeated by the officiating minister, wherever Methodism has 
an established congregation. See Dr. Brett's Collection and the 63d of 
the Oxford Tracts, vol. i., p. 446. 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 585 

heartfelt, vital experience of religion, whose inner soul and 
outward expression are love toward God and our fellow- 
man. To this point everything is made to tend. This is 
the theme of the morning love-feast. It is the end and 
object of the sermon. The prayers and songs of the public 
worship center upon the same conclusion. The minister and 
the people make it the topic of their exhortations. Even 
the sacraments are so administered, so shaped by the extem- 
pore remarks and supplications, as to cause every heart to 
feel that nothing can take the place of vital piety. Every 
part of every service presses the hearer and the worshiper 
along in this one direction ; the warmth of interest, the 
strength of feeling, the power of this one purpose are so 
marked, and so irresistible, that the whole body of the con- 
gregation is moved along, till every individual is actuated by 
the common sentiment. There is no lifeless sitting and 
listening to the service. All is real, vital, powerful, impres- 
sive ; every person feels himself to be, not a spectator, but 
an actor ; every one recognizes within the form the pervad- 
ing power of original Christianity; and the glow of the 
common experience is so intense, that, sooner or later, it 
melts and assimilates the whole mass of the worshiping 
assembly to itself. It presses itself beyond the hmits of 
the ordinary audience. It fills the parish ; it throws its light 
and heat upon the surrounding population. Full of the 
living spirit of the doctrine, and controlled by the order of 
its discipline, the worship of Methodism, in which the princi- 
ples and virtues of the whole system are included, has ever 
been and ever will be, so long as the life of religion is 
embodied in it, the active agency in the progress of her 
victories and in the succession of her triumphs. The doc- 
trine is right ; the system of propagating that doctrine is 
efficient ; bat, as the enterprise is aimed at the heart, and 
only through the heart to the entire nature and composition 
of the race, the doctrine and the discipline had to reach a 

25* 



5S6 



METHODISM THE RECOVERED IDEAL 



result, and maintain it too, which, as the common status of 
its worship, possesses the earnestness, the fervor, the living 
and animating power, which causes the Wesleyan move- 
ment to he a burning and a quenchless fire among the cooler 
religions and torpid populations of the world. 

And here, reader, I have reached the natural conclusion of 
my subject. We have walked together over a wide area 
and run our vision over a great variety of objects. But we 
have had around us, nevertheless, only one general land- 
scape. We have been trying to determine, by submitting 
the facts of the case to a philosophical examination, the pro- 
blem contained in the remarkable success of Methodism. 
We have seen how John Wesley, by the work of regenera- 
tion, by an experience of a heartfelt religion, by the posses- 
sion, profession and practice of primitive Christianity, became 
the first Methodist. We have seen how his father's family 
were successively converted to his views and made partakers 
of his piety. We have seen the respectability, the genius, 
the position, the influence of this first Methodist family. We 
have seen the gradual expansion of the indwelling and plastic 
principle of practical religion, in England, in the United 
States, in the leading countries of Europe, on the degraded 
soil of Africa, along the shores and larger streams of Asia, 
and among the islands of all the seas and oceans of the globe. 
We have seen, particularly in England and in the United 
States, the religious, literary and social power of this great 
movement, and what are the signs of its social, literary and 
religious future. The problem being thus before us, we have 
seen what opposite opinions have been and are yet entertained 
about it, and what judgments have been put on record by 
representative men, from the day of its origin. Passing from 
this general statement of the question, and from these out- 
side solutions of the mystery of the wonderful growth of 
Methodism, we have wrought out the natural as well as his- 
torical development of its germinating principle, and beheld 



OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND WORSHIP. 



5S7 



this principle expand into a doctrine, discipline and worship, 
which together give to the world the truest existing exhibi- 
tion of ideal Christianity. We have found Methodism to be, 
not a system of opinions and practices gradually built up by 
adding one thing after another to a small and unintelligent 
beginning* as some writers have superficially imagined, but a 
legitimate and natural growth from a solitary point — the 
necessity and possibility of personal religion— which, as a 
germ, contained everything since coming from it. We have 
thus studied the theory of the Wesleyan organization, till we 
have found its fundamental idea, its central force, from which 
everything that it is, and everything it has accomplished, has 
been evolved. Within this central idea, this primary and 
propelling force, we have discovered the origin and measure 
of its own existence, and the law of its success. Methodism 
as an idea, Methodism as a movement, Methodism as a 
system, is nothing but the personal religion of its founder 
multiplied into the numerous multitude of his adherents, who, 
in whatsoever they are as a body of men, and in everything 
they have undertaken and performed, have been molded, 
governed and propelled by this common and all-controlling 
force. Methodism has greatly expanded, and has accom- 
plished great results, simply because the power that created 
it, the power that pushed it forward, the power that has 
kept it ever youthful, ever vigorous, ever active, is also great. 
So irresistible has been this interior power, that its natural 
development has been easy and unrestrained by outward 
obstacles, its form and features, its institutions and customs, 
its attempts and triumphs, having sprung out of it as natu- 
rally as branches shoot from the parent stock, and not been 
accumulated and added to it by the fortunate use of happy 
accidents. It has been said, I know, that Methodism is the 
child of Providence. So is everything a child of Providence. 
But this is a very superficial way of speaking. Methodism 
is an Idea ; this idea is a Life ; this life lias created to itself 



588 



THE RECOVERED IDEAL OF CHRISTIANITY. 



a Body, whose dimensions, activities, laws, habits, and suc- 
cesses are the product of this indwelling and mighty soul ; 
and the reason why the system thus generated is so identical 
with the system of primitive Christianity, and has outdone 
the achievements of the original Church of Christ, is not 
because Wesley was a man learned in ancient history, and 
labored to conform his movement to the apostolic model, 
but because the same principle will always produce similar 
results, in spite of any amount of dirTerence in surrounding 
circumstances. This idea, this life, this soul will . go on 
growing, progressing, and conquering, so long as it is left 
free to expand and work according to the law of its own 
existence, and not cramped and restrained by heterogeneous 
additions and alterations. The best thing that its friends can 
do for it is to drink in, more and more, of its animating 
spirit, and then give that spirit the freest use of whatever 
they are or happen to possess. Having sprung from a 
heavenly origin, it needs no grafting of the scions of other 
systems upon itself. We have only to take care of it and let 
it grow. This was the policy of its founder. This was the 
policy of his immediate successors. This, in general, has 
been the policy and practice of its keepers for the past and 
passing generations. We of this day, and our representa- 
tives for all future time, have only to imitate the wisdom of 
our fathers, to submit to be guided by this creative principle, 
not to tamper too much with training it. Just as it has gr own, 
so it will continue to expand ; it is a kernel of God's own 
planting ; and it is destined to become, if thus treated, a tree 
of life for the healing of the people of many nations! 



THE END. 



